


Short Circuits, Sudden Endings

by biodigitaljazz



Series: Improvidence [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fights, M/M, Makeups, Memory Loss, Post Traumatic Stress, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, Reestablishing Relationships, Sburb Reset, Teenage Boys Are Really Fucking Stupid, i'm sorry lol, male/male relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2015-04-01
Packaged: 2018-01-16 12:39:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 65,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1347781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biodigitaljazz/pseuds/biodigitaljazz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Dave Strider.</p>
<p>You really wish you could remember everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So.  
> So so so.  
> Don't be mad, k? Last installment of the Improvidence series! This chapter is a stage-setter with a lot of gabbing. Gabgabgab.  
> This may be slow-going as I am currently balls-deep in wedding planning. I'll try my best to update as often as I can. Come say hi on Tumblr, in the meantime. :) thanks, as always, for sticking with me!
> 
> * * *

Your name is Dave Strider.

You really wish you could remember everything. 

Well no, it’s not entirely true that you remember _nothing_. You get bits and pieces of stuff in the events leading up to ‘the end’ and everything that happened well before it is clear as fucking crystal, but only sometimes. It’s a strange thing to try and describe; the closest comparison that you’ve been able to come up with so far is when you have one of those seriously fucking vivid dreams, but can only remember it within the first five minutes of being awake before it fades away, really quickly. Except in this case, it’s waking up right out of that dream with the sharp clarity over and over and fucking over again, like waves. Sounds weird, right? Yeah, you guess it’s pretty weird. Though the word ‘weird’ really holds no fucking substance with you anymore.

You definitely remember a face, though. A very specific face.

And then, nothing.

Fuck if you know why, but your recollections are severely limited to your older memories first. Getting the game, installing it, getting everyone else into it, the apocalypse, dying, rebirthing, the frogs, basically everything that went down before the big meteor trip… all of that shit is as easy to drum up as your own damn name. The meteor is where it gets all shaky – you remember a good chunk of things, in the first year or two, but after that it gets real fuzzy. Forget trying to figure out what the fuck happened when you finally landed the damn thing; when it comes down to all of that stuff, your brain has been completely wiped clean, probably intentionally. 

You won the game. You know that much. Everything came to a boiling point and you’re sure a LOT of shit went down in the final upswing. At first you thought maybe you _didn’t_ win, considering the circumstances of the aftermath that you are currently a part of, but everyone else says you did, too. They’re in the same boat as you; they barely remember anything after a certain point, but they know for a _fact_ that you technically came out victorious. You like to think that there was this grandiose ass-kicking, something for the history books if history books even acknowledged what went down. You like to think that, yeah, you guys beat the odds when they were right up against you. You guys, cracking some major skulls. You and your buddies, beating that fucking game so damn hard that it had no choice but to come right back around to a hard reset.

That last part actually did happen.

You woke up in your room back in Houston, in bed, like any typical morning before everything started. Your body felt funny, in pretty much every way that it possibly could. You felt abnormally hot. You were disoriented and confused. In fact, the confusion was so overwhelming that it took you a little while to realize that you were waking up at the tender fucking age of thirteen on the same day that you got and installed Sburb in the first place. Except there was no Sburb. No game. Just life. Life as a seventeen year old brain trapped inside a thirteen year old casing, an experienced mind in a body that had just barely begun to figure its shit out. Just like you’d feared. Just what you _didn’t_ want.

Once that little nugget hit you, you instantly panicked. Who the fuck wouldn’t, right? Years, _years_ of having your life go in one direction, and then suddenly having it careen violently into a totally different one and you, without any fucking knowledge or memory of how it even happened. You tripped out of bed and hauled ass out of your room. Your initial plan was to barge directly into Bro’s room unannounced, fueled by this desperate hope that someone would be there, but he beat you to the punch. 

Just as you reached for the knob, the door whipped open from the inside. Like he woke up and processed everything at the exact same time as you did.

You stared at one another for a really long fucking time.

Eventually, you caught up with everyone and tried to make sense out of everything. Basically, what you and John and Rose and Jade have been piecing together is that the game is over, no doubt about that, and everything went right fucking back to the way it was before Sburb was even A Thing, like the game is rewarding you for your victory with a shitload of life experiences that are all neatly tucked up in your brain where you _absolutely don’t fucking want them_ and all of your loved ones back. You do remember thinking once that it’d be nice to have Bro again. You remember _seriously_ wanting it. 

Now, he’s back. You got your wish. And all you can do is watch him with this weird, misplaced distrust when he isn’t looking and pretend you don’t notice when he is. Which is more often than not.

None of you can remember much of anything toward the end, but Bro remembers more than you think he can handle. He gets these ghostly memories of being someone who is, and is not, himself. He remembers dying. His nose bleeds a lot. He doesn’t really talk about it, at least not to you. He just quietly excuses himself and flash steps the fuck away to deal with it on his own. This method of coping seems to run through all of you in different ways.

You and Bro tried to stick it out alone but it was too weird, too _much_ , and you needed to surround yourself with familiar shit because all of this stuff from your past-now-present had become completely _un_ familiar to you; your room, your possessions, everything. You both agreed at the same time that you would throw Cal out. Looking at him made Bro’s nose bleed a lot more than usual and made you sick to your stomach. 

You threw him out. Then you lit the trash on fire. Just in case. It was almost a bonding experience. Almost.

After a few months of struggling to adjust to life again and a lot of really fucking long phone conversations with the rest of your fellow ‘survivors’, you all agreed to move in with Rose. Her house could fit an entire third-world country and it was pretty clear that everyone was having just as hard a time as you were. John developed off-and-on agoraphobia. Jade was (still is) having seriously intense recurring nightmares, like every single fucking night. And Rose… Rose is in the exact same boat as you are. You each lost a family member, and now you have them back. And everything is different, like they’re strangers to you and always HAVE been strangers to you and no matter how much you’d really like to have the old connection back, it’s basically fucked beyond all repair and recognition now.

And you both lost someone pretty fucking important.

Regressing in age, your life rewinding itself against your will, having dead people come back to life, being inserted back into normal, everyday society… it was a lot to take in, a _lot_ to have to get used to. It wasn’t until after you all moved in with Rose and got settled, after you become reacquainted with the people you thought you would die beside (god, fuck, there were so many tears the day you all showed up and reunited, _so_ much ugly crying, you thought your chest was going to fucking cave in on itself trying to keep it all held back and stuffed down), that you started thinking clearly about him again.

Then you started looking.

You still had PesterChum on your computer and you set it so that it would remain on at all times. If the trolls were able to speak to you before from an entirely different universe and planet, there was no reason that they wouldn’t still have that ability now. You checked that chums list every single day, multiple times an hour, and you did any and all research that you could on their species and their names. Obviously, since they’re aliens, you came up with fucking diddly, but you were _just_ delusional and foolishly hopeful enough to think that there was a shot; maybe something would be discovered. Maybe they’d be looking for you, too, and reach out in their own ways. If not today, maybe tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next day. And somehow, at some point, your respective extended fingertips would finally eventually touch.

You did this, tirelessly and stubbornly and stupidly, for five immovable years.

Then you realized, kind of suddenly, that it was never going to actually happen.

YOU won the game. YOU, the humans, defeated Sburb. The trolls didn’t win their session. They didn’t win yours. As far as the game was concerned, they were NP-fucking-C’s, just helping you along, assisting you until you emerged as the victors. Then, just like the rest of Sburb, they disappeared.

They don’t exist anymore.

If they did, they would have contacted you by now. You would have found them. Something.

That face that you remember, right before the end – that grey face, soft frown lines already written into the skin, piercing golden eyes, sharp teeth almost always bared in one way or another, the grumpy little fuck – is a face that will get less and less recognizable with time. That face that you, for SOME reason, grew to look forward to seeing every day of your goddamn life is a face that you will never see again.

Ever.

The first time you realized it, you holed yourself up for awhile. You’d like to say it was only a week or something but it was probably way more; you spent a lot of the time sleeping so you can’t really remember. Striders have never been particularly good at the whole emotions thing. Emotions are messy and sloppy and most of the time they make you feel pretty terrible. It’s easier not to have to worry about feeling shit. Unfortunately, you’re human, so it’s gonna happen sometimes and it’s gonna happen when you MOST want to turn it off.

Sleeping is weird, now. You don’t have a second self; you just dream. Random nonsensical dreams, like going out to get an ice cream from a 7-11 run by a fucking tyrannosaurus and asking him where the nearest airport is because you need to take a taxi from New York to Greenland and you don’t want to be late for your ‘meeting’. That kind of dream. You never did figure out why you were getting a cab from an airport, or what the hell the ‘meeting’ was for. Blue-balls dreams, you call those, where you really want to follow through with them to the end for shits and giggs, but you wake up before you can. 

You don’t have nightmares. Not really. Not the way Jade does. John even has them more than you do. They aren’t really happy dreams either, but that’s fine by you. Whenever they are actually happy and fully realized, they’re about _him_. That _face_. And you always come out of them feeling phenomenally fucking empty and terrible.

Roxy has been very, very careful about where she keeps her booze, which you think is more of a stock preservation effort than actually keeping it away from everyone for their health or personal benefit. Not that it does any good; Rose has already managed to find her stash like, six fucking times, so she needs to keep changing the hiding places. Girl knows what her creature comforts are, and unfortunately they aren’t going to just poof, vanish the way you kind of all wish they would. 

You tried it, because it was there and you were fifteen at the time and everything sucked. Bro caught you. Smacked you fucking stupid over it. You’ve been a lot more discreet after that, though you haven’t dipped into it much at all since then. There’s not a whole lot of fulfillment in it for you. You’re giddy and stupid and happy for like an hour and then you just get horny and sad. Not a good look for you.

It’s been six years since you first woke up after the session ended. You are now nineteen, though by all accounts if you take how many years you spent in Sburb into consideration you guess you could say that you’re technically around twenty-three. That made you feel all sorts of fucking weird when you did the math the first time. Still does.

Life is still really hard. You and the others have been enrolled into the same schools since your move to New York and you’ve had a really fucked up time making friends that stick. This could have been the perfect opportunity to fall into cliques and shit, to figure out your places on the social hierarchy of people who are ‘your age’, but none of you have really been interested in it for the most part. You all got your hobbies and extracurriculars, sure; John was in jazz band up until your recent graduation. You tried your hand at a few sports until you stuck with track, and you kicked ASS at it. Rose still knits like a demon when she’s home and her brain gets to her without the assistance of alcohol, and Jade’s been mulling around with the idea of volunteering at an animal shelter. Bec respawned as a normal dog and died a year ago, so she’s been missing his company. You get that there’s a lot more than just ‘missing his company’ below the surface considering he used to be her _fucking guardian_ but you aren’t about to pry on that shit.

You try really hard to be normal people. You’re all brimming on the edge of twenty at this point and you made it through middle and high school, which was a pretty major accomplishment considering all but one of you had to fucking travel across the country (and then some, in Jade’s case) right in the middle of it, but it comes to no surprise that none of you a particularly focused on or even interested in college right now. 

You wouldn’t be able to go away somewhere without them. And vice versa. It would drive you all fucking crazy. What makes you think that going away to spend four or more years at another school living as an independent adult would be a great idea when mundane things like queue lines in coffee shops or walk signals or anything else that restricts you or holds you back still freaks you out, after the entire world was literally fucking lawless for you six years ago? Don’t even get started on having to sit still for certain periods of time during school. You, of all fucking people, who used to be able to _manipulate_ time, being forced to obey restrictions on it set by other people.

You were always in detention. Teachers said you were too jittery, too disruptive. Man, if they only knew.

Right now, you and John are holding down shitty little jobs to help pay for some of the food that goes into the house and personal shit like your cell phones. Neither of you drive, so that money goes toward public transit, too. He works at a gas station during the night so he doesn’t have to deal with people so much, and you’re a cashier at a grocery store. Both jobs suck equal amounts of gigantic hairy ass, but they’re baby steps. You both have shit that you wanna end up doing once you’re fully and successfully acclimated back into society, but you’re not _ripe_ enough yet. 

You don’t know what Rose and Jade plan on doing, but they’re not stressed out about it because Roxy’s got a _fuckton_ of money (you aren’t sure where it originated from, and neither does she) and Bro’s creepy puppet thing is still bringing in some extra dough, especially since he’s remembered from the him-that-was-but-wasn’t-him how to perfect robotic additions. You have no fucking clue what the additions are and you don’t want to know. Even just the implications are. Just. Ew. No, man. _No_.

Roxy and Bro got really close once the move was over, which doesn’t surprise you. In their Sburb timeline, they were like, a super-duper megatron fag-and-hag combo and even something like their entire lives completely resetting didn’t put a dent in it. That’s fucking friendship, right there. It kind of makes things seem a little more comfortable with you and Rose, too – Roxy’s her mom, and Bro is a lot like a dad for you sometimes, so being siblings comes pretty easy now, even removing the whole ecto-biology crap from the equation. You see that it gets weird between Rose and Roxy the same way it does between you and Bro sometimes, though. You guys remember being each others’ older and younger brothers at the same time. _That’s_ fucked up enough. You can’t really imagine what remembering being someone’s _mother and daughter_ at the same time must be like.

No wonder they drink.

Just like you’ve been trying to extend some feelers out there for the trolls, Bro and Roxy briefly tried to get in touch with the other two kids who were in their session with them. Unfortunately, they’ve both been gone for a long time; Jade’s grandpa was one of them (oh man, that whole thing was SUPER fucked up, that was like a full-scale child protective services shit-show until Roxy managed to legally adopt her; you don’t know any of the details, really, but having a lot of money really seems to be the way to actually get shit done efficiently) and John’s grandma was the other. John’s dad has an apartment close by; he and Roxy see each other pretty regularly as friends, but the spark they had between them during the game isn’t there anymore. From what you see, at least. You spend a lot of your time watching everyone instead of thinking, you guess. It’s a little easier to deal with all the bullshit, being able to remove yourself from it when you need to.

You’ve never seen Bro cry before, but you know when he feels like he has to or he should be because he fucking vanishes for awhile and you can never find him. Once he found out about the other two, he disappeared for a few days. Roxy told you that the worst of it is because in her timeline, he and Jade’s grandpa used to be a Thing and he really cared about him, so that loss is a particularly hard fucking hit. 

And suddenly you related more to him than you have in your entire life/non-life/re-life/second life/what the _fuck_ ever.

You’ve dated a few times. You just kicked your second round of puberty’s ass and you have a dick, _obviously_ you’re gonna try to date. It gets really complicated, though. These girls and their weird-ass compliments like how much they like your hair, or how your eyes are _like ohmygod soooo cool_ , or how it’s hot that you wanna be a DJ because DJ’s are _ssssooooo hot_. Please. It’s ego-stroking and all at first, but after awhile, _man_. Shut _up_. All you find yourself wanting is some fire in there somewhere, some fucking _feeling_. You wish you could successfully figure out what’s missing from all of these chicks, because you’ve legit dating one or two who actually have been really nice and really cool, but you are just… never satisfied. There’s nothing to keep you going, nothing to be challenged with. The past year or so you’ve stayed single because it’s just fucking easier that way. 

You had something going with him on that goddamn meteor. There were no firework-backdropped confessions of deep, dark, unbridled love or anything like that, not as far as you know anyway, but there _was_ something. You’re pretty sure you guys were closer than your last few, clear memories are letting on. You’re almost positive there was a kick of something more than just best bros in that relationship.

Maybe you actually _really_ liked each other beyond what you can dimly recall as adolescent physical attraction and contact. Maybe that’s why you can’t get past this big invisible hurdle, because there was no closure.

You just wish you could fucking remember what happened, after that first year-ish on the meteor. Things come and go so quickly and distantly that sometimes you think you’ve got a grasp on something, like you’re on the _very edge_ of getting it back, and then it wrenches itself away from you and it’s gone. 

You remember his face, though. You remember what you last felt when you looked at it, as confusing as it is. You cling to that feeling because you’re convinced that you’re not likely to remember much more. 

And you cling to the final, fleeting memory of that face right before the end hit, because you know that it’s the last memory of him that you’ll ever have.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first time writing Bro and John whatsup.
> 
> * * *

A shining example of how societally fucking awkward your life has become is when you and John decide that maybe doing shit like normal teenagers on Saturday nights instead of wallowing around like a couple of sad, soggy blobs will be beneficial for you. 

You decide to go to a movie, because right now John does a lot better in situations where there aren’t too many people and he can keep to himself. It floors you how much the end of Sburb has changed him, but you can’t really be too surprised when you really think about the nitty-gritty of it. He was a huge catalyst for a lot of the shit that you all went through in the game, and he’s just a regular nobody now, like everyone else. He could have gone one of two ways with having a normal life handed to him after how crucial he used to be – he could have used it as a pedestal to boost him right the fuck back up and try to regain that importance by doing something special and outstanding. Or he could have let it overwhelm him and drag him down into heavily doubting his self worth. Which is what he ultimately wound up doing, the dumbass.

Since public transit is _more_ than just a bitch, it's like four and a half bitches, you usually rely on Bro to cart your useless ass around if there’s somewhere you need to go that’s considerably far away. His car is a piece of garbage (which it SHOULDN’T be because the guy has the money to afford a nice one, what the fuck) and he drives like he’s 90 but it’s still better than hailing a cab or trying to figure out bus routes and times. All you want to do is see a movie with your best friend. That’s way too much effort for something so simple.

You find him where he usually is these days – cooped up in one of the spare rooms of the house that he’s taken over and transformed into his freaky-deaky man cave. The door is slightly open, which means he isn’t beating off or crying into his pillow, so you only give one knock to make your presence known before pushing into the room.

He’s at his work desk against the far wall, so he turns away from what he’s tinkering with to glance at you over a shoulder. It’s only a quick acknowledgement before he’s going right back to what he was doing before with a muttered, “What’s up, big guy.”

He doesn’t call you ‘little man’ anymore. Not since you were sixteen. You sort of miss it.

“Me and John want to go see a movie,” you tell him.

“John and I,” he corrects you like it’s as natural as blinking. “And congratulations.”

“We need a ride.”

“Yeah.” He sets the screwdriver he’s been working with to his side on the desk. “Figured as much.”

“I’m okay on money, though.” Because you know he’s going to ask. He always does.

“A’right.” He stands, stretches his neck out a little, and turns to face you fully. You wonder how he works in those fucking stupid-ass glasses. You wonder why he still _wears_ those stupid-ass glasses. Comforting, maybe? Could explain why you still always wear yours, too. At least yours are cool, though. “When you gonna get yourself a driver’s license, anyway?”

Ahh, dad-talk.

“Idunno.” You shrug a shoulder. “Someday. Soon-ish. Maybe.”

He smirks, only a little, and reaches out to give one of your shoulders a gentle shove. “Yeah, okay. Get moving.”

On the way to the theatre, you take your mind off of Bro’s distinct lack of acknowledgement toward stop signs and speed limits (which is to say he drives _slow_ , not _fast_ , which is _worse_ ) by nudging John’s foot with your own to drag his attention away from the scenery outside of the car. He looks at you and you get that fucking _feeling_ again – it happens from time to time at random, and it’s not even just with John. It’s with Rose and Jade, too. It’s momentary displacement, like a flashback that you’re not expecting and is gone before you can even fully process or recognize it.

You don’t let on, of course, because he smiles kind of vacantly and you don’t wanna freak him out or anything. “What?” he asks and you nudge his foot again because you’re annoying and concerned and that’s why.

“ _What_?” he presses, but his smile is bigger and that’s points to you, hells yeah.

“What are we even seeing tonight, anyway? Did we go into this with a plan?”

“Nope!”

“Excellent.”

Bro is watching you intermittenly through the rear-view mirror. You can tell even with the dopey shades in the way. He can be all stealth and sneaky with everyone else, but not you.

“Let’s buy tickets to the first thing we see and theatre-hop.” The look on John’s face is still making you feel a little weird and dizzy, but it’s a thing you’re starting to get used to.

“How inappropriate and scandalous.” It’s nice to see him acting normal. He does it a lot more lately and while you’re still not the most enthusiastic dude in the world, you’re willing to play it up a little for a chance to keep that normality trucking. “Fuck yes, let’s do it, we’ll see every movie.”

“So who’s driving you home in that case?” Bro pipes up. See? You knew the motherfucker was eavesdropping, even though he looked like he was totally disinterested. “Cause I sure as shit ain’t coming to get y’all at one in the morning.”

“We’ll walk,” you reply, and you see one of his eyebrows lift in his rear-view reflection. You go on, “We’ll be totally safe, man. If we don’t make it before the sun rises we’ll keep each other warm for the night. Just a couple of dudes, snugglin’ it out. Like, copious amounts of man-closeness. _Bro_ -keback Mountain and shit.”

“Weird,” John mutters beside you.

“Very weird,” Bro agrees from the front seat.

You don’t think it’s so weird. Moreso you wish one of them fucking laughed, you thought that was a good play on words. You were all ready to pat yourself on the back for making a funny but now it’s just the sound of a balloon slowly deflating.

Instead, you bite Bro back petulantly. “Says the giant queer.”

Bro snorts, but he doesn’t say anything.

You look at John. He looks mildly uncomfortable, like he’s watching a movie with his parents and there’s a sex scene in it or something. You know it’s not the gay jokes, he’s beyond that at this point (Jesus, if you had a fucking nickel every time someone thought he was gay in high school) – you figure it’s probably something to do with the reset. The trolls sort of rebooted all of your respective opinions on relationships because humans do this really annoying thing where they raise their children linearly. You, though; you weren’t raised by a parent and Bro cares the _actual least_ about sexuality issues, so you kind of have the privilege of saying Legitimately Fuck Gender, but nothing probably could have prepared the four of you for actual alien romantic customs.

John used to be so quick to hand out his ‘I’m Not A Homo’ reminders. If he stayed the way he was back then after the reset, he would have practically had it fucking tattooed on his goddamn forehead with the way school treated him, just to make his point perfectly 100% clear. 

But nope. He threw you a curveball by being a submissive little cheesenip with the onslaught of accusations and you can’t help but wonder if it was just unexpected high school brutality knocking him off-course, or if he really HAS started to change his view on his own sexuality. Leave it to a bunch of aliens to make someone like John stop and hesitate, right?

You could say that it’s changed yours, but there wasn’t really much to change to begin with. Not with sexuality. You’re an equal opportunity player and always have been, to a certain degree. You think. You can’t really be quoted on that given the fact that your memory loss begins around when you were just starting to figure yourself out sexually. Did you even get to have sex? If so, was it with who you’re thinking it could have been with? See, this is where you get frustrated; so much shit you want to remember with absolutely no chance at actually being able to do so.

Fuckin’ awkward thing to get all introspective about. John says “Aaaanyways,” to break the weird silence following the gay stuff and he actually startles you a little. 

But nothing else is actually talked about. He says his “Anyways” but nothing’s tacked on to the end of it. The silence is only successfully broken for the length of the word, and then everyone goes right back into being quiet and thoughtful, like broken toys trying to work through the very last jolt of their dead batteries.

 

-  -  -

 

You definitely don’t stick to one movie. You barely pay attention to any of them, really. You stick around the twenty some-odd theatres that the complex has for like… twenty to thirty minutes at a time before moving on to the next one. It’s nothing to do with your attention spans and everything to do with the fact that you finally fucking got John OUT and DOING STUFF. Anything that pops into his wonderful, simple little head is exactly what you plan on doing. And what he wants to do is restlessly watch bits and pieces of different movies before getting bored and moving on. _Whatever_ , man. You’re counting your feeble blessings as they come to you at this point.

Everything is going peachy for awhile. He’s in a good mood, you’re in a good mood, and you’re just stupid teenagers having a dude’s night out doing stupid shit, and it’s awesome. You find the emptiest parts of the room and kick your feet up on the seats in front of you and share a fucking gigantic tub of popcorn. You joke too loudly by accident a few times and get hisses from various anonymous movie-goers around you to be quiet and John looks like he might be on the _edge_ of embarrassment but he’s not quite making the plunge into it completely. At one point you wander into a theatre and sit a few seats in front of a couple of purposely loud, chatty bro-guys and decide to get on their nerves by trying to feed John popcorn and sneaking your arm around his shoulders like a creep. John ruins the fun by shoving you away every time because He’s Not A Homo but you can tell he’s feeling more amused and less uncomfortable about it regardless because he’s trying not to laugh and calling you gross.

You both really needed a little bit of time to get the fuck away from everything and be blissfully distracted. As much as Real Life fucks with your heads, you have to admit that it feels good, sometimes, to be a normal kid. Big kid. Not mentally a kid but a kid at heart. Whatever you wanna call it. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t last the entire night. Because at one point, just when the two of you are peaking with the good feels, you just happen to unknowingly wander into a theatre that’s showing a Nicholas Cage movie.

Now, normally you wouldn’t give two flying shitballs about Nick Cage because you don’t necessarily like or appreciate him as an actor. Actually, you think he flat-out sucks. It doesn’t really matter what your perception on him is though, because for John, he’s a trigger. Straight-up. As soon as that fucking doofy face comes on screen, even YOUR spine stiffens. You immediately glance at John beside you and he’s stopped chewing his popcorn; gone stone-still and staring blankly at the screen. ‘Blankly’ being a loose term, there; you can tell there are a million and one fucking things going on behind his eyes right now despite what he looks like from the outside. You chance a quick glance around you before leaning over a little closer to him.

“Hey,” you murmur. “You all right?”

He nods a little and you don’t believe him for one fucking second.

“Wanna go try something else?” you press. “C’mon man, let’s go see something else.”

His stare lingers, even after the offending actor is off-screen, but he stands and lets you lead him out.

You don’t end up going to another theatre after that because it’s pretty clear that Cage’s ugly mug just yanked out a whole stream of shit that John’s been trying to shove back and away for a long time. This is one of the biggest scenarios where you and John differ the most – bring on the triggers, y’all, because you actually _want_ to remember shit. You don’t care how horrible it is or how ruined you’ll be after the fact; if you could have everything back you’d take it in a fucking heartbeat. You can’t deal with stuff being all mysterious and shrouded and unknown. John, on the other hand, is perfectly content with having his memory blacked out from a certain point on. You feel like if he had his way, he’d opt to have EVERYTHING from Sburb totally erased.

You head outside and around to the alley beside the theatre with him. It smells faintly of dumpster and it’s a little creepy but you take a seat beside one another on the sidewalk curb and just _sit_ for a little while. You know he’s trying to suss stuff out because this sort of thing rarely ever happens to him, and you’re kinda thankful for it because you got your own crap to think about now, too. Sburb, obviously. As much as you try, it’s admittedly really hard to really buckle down and think about anything else.

Or any _one_ else.

“Doesn’t it ever get to you?” John finally asks after a bit, turning his head to look at you while he draws his knees up to his chest. 

“What, specifically?”

He pauses, thinking, then huffs out a laugh and shrugs. “Everything. Just… _everything_.”

“Matter of fact,” you reply. “Yeah, basically everything gets to me.”

“How do you do…” He gestures to all of you. “… _that_?”

You raise an eyebrow at him. “I was born with it, baby.”

He kinda flat-mouths at you. “I mean, act like you don’t really think about it or let it get to you. How do you _do_ it?”

“You have a handle on it, dude, I never hear you bringing anything really heavy up, ever.”

“That’s not the same thing! Ignoring it is not the same thing.”

“How do you know I’m not just ignoring it too, then?”

“Oh my god, Dave, seriously.” He sounds exasperated. “Don’t be a weirdo, just… give me some advice or something.”

Your turn to pause. You chew at the inside of your bottom lip for a second as you try and sort out what to tell him. John is a peculiar creature; he’s stubborn and he doesn’t like to admit that he’s doing _anything_ incorrectly. You’re not exactly in any position to tell him that he’s handling the situation the wrong way because what the fuck kind of way is the _right_ one, here?

BUT, point remains that he’s admitting to you in an ass-backwards kind of way that he’s obviously not _feeling_ like he’s doing it right, and you apparently always look like you are. You’re torn between being a self-serving asshole and giving him some whacked-out advice that he can try to follow to make himself feel better, or being honest with him and telling him that he’s doing fine and he ain’t gonna get any better taking advice from anyone else.

Decisions, decisions.

In the end you figure your best friend is suffering from a full-frontal, violent Nick Cage overdose and probably doesn’t need to take on any more abuse for the night. You decide to be a good boy for a change and shove your hand onto his face, pushing him away from you a little.

“There’s no _method_ , you dumbass,” you insult him good-naturedly, pulling your hand back quickly because he’s been known to lick or bite you when you do that; he knows it sicks you out a little. “We all have our issues right now, and we all gotta deal with them on our own terms. You’re fine. Nobody’s judging you because you can’t watch some fuckin’ Nicholas Cage garbage anymore. Shit, I judge you more for actually watching it in the first place, consider this like a religious cleansing or something.”

Another single breath of laughter before he’s settling back into the little nook of his arms and knees. “Says the one who went out of his way to send me the Con Air stuffed animal.”

“Yep,” you admit without shame. Okay… a little shame. “For your thirteenth.”

“The _first_ thirteenth,” he rings in and laughs again, a little stronger this time.

“Yeah.” You feel the humour slinking away from you a little as you recall what it felt like to wake up as a thirteen year old again. _Bluh_. “Well, whatever bro, we went through puberty again, we’re _two times_ a man than anyone else in the stinking world.”

“Haha, I guess,” he agrees kind of distantly. “That sort of does give us cool bragging rights.”

“Sure it does.”

John takes in a deep breath and sighs it out. “I guess it’s just hard for me to forget or ignore everything that happened before that weird space ship thing.”

“You mean the meteor,” you say glumly, because you sure as hell weren't on no space ship. Not to be confused with spaceship. “Yeah, see, that’s where I can’t relate, buddy. It’s hard for me to accept that I can’t remember anything that happened after it.”

“Would you really want to?” he asks quietly, looking at you again. “Maybe there’s a reason why we aren’t remembering something. Maybe something really awful happened and the game is basically telling us that we’re better off forgetting.”

You’re tugging on the strings of your hoodie idly as you roll that one over in your head for a second.

"Shit," you say stupidly. "I didn't think about that." Because you didn't. Not really. Maybe something similar but nothing as forward as that. "Idunno man. I guess maybe I have some like… weird unfinished business on my end that I'm going fucking crazy over trying to piece together."

A very small silence drifts between you.

" _Him_ , huh?" John asks.

You politely request that the studio audience not look at you like that. Of course you told everyone about the relationship that you thought you may have been building during that meteor trip. Way after the fact, of course, but if you can't be honest with one another by now, after everything that's happened, how the hell are you expected to stay sane?

You don't answer him. He backs off. That's all he needs to know.


	3. Chapter 3

Puberty, you’ve decided, has treated your friends very well and it’s not fair.

Makes you sound like a creep but it’s also true. You sort of noticed it back during the Sburb days, too, but you were kind of distracted by a whole hell of a lot of other things going on at the time so you didn’t really grace yourself with the opportunity to stop and _look_. 

Rose is the most awkward to notice because she’s basically your sibling, but you can see why guys try to trip all over themselves after her. She’s thin and petite and she hasn’t lost that air of elegance that she always used to carry with her. Unless you’re used to her. Or unless she’s drunk. She just pulls it off really well, really fools a lot of people; dudes usually seem to go for that. She’s a big fucking nerd and _man_ does she have a mouth on her, but she doesn’t let it show outwardly. She’s _mysterious_. And really pretty. This, you consider a bragging right, because once people in school found out that you were related, they would immediately start pointing out all of your physical similarities.

John’s pretty cute, you guess, for a huge dweeb. He still sort of transforming from a kid with a belly to a pseudo-stringbean with a belly; the belly’s gone down a bit, it’s just soft now, but his limbs have gotten _super_ freaking long. He’s taller than you by at least a couple of inches. You call him an orangutan sometimes – he doesn’t ACTUALLY look like one but he gets all annoyed and pissed off and you like annoying him and pissing him off. It brings you closer together, you feel. It’s a bonding exercise.

Jade isn’t really as active as she used to be – Sburb really kind of gave you all a constant, usually nonconsensual workout – so she’s grown into these really fucking amazing curves. You defended her all the fucking time because teenagers are morons and think that anything above a hundred pounds is considered fat. She used to get down on herself a lot, but you’d like to think that your scattered, well-placed and well-timed compliments have been starting to boost her back up. She went from wearing big baggy sweaters and shit in school to shedding some layers and wearing more form-fitting clothes –props to her, you fucking dig it. Streamlined people just aren’t usually your thing. You’ll take that full-figured, Renaissance-era silhouette _any_ fucking day.

There was a short period of time, like in the last year and a half or something, where you actually tried the whole dating thing with Jade because it made sense to you at the time. She’s cute and smart and hilarious and she’s the only girl you know (who isn’t your sister, _thanks_ ) who wouldn’t freak the fucking hell out and try to commit you if you told her about Sburb. Because she was right there in the goddamn fold with you, man, and while you _have_ dated others outside of the current friend group before, it’s REALLY hard for you to imagine sticking with someone long-term who doesn’t know what the hell you’ve been through. There’s only so much bullshitting around other topics that you can do without dragging Sburb into the conversation.

Fell flat, though. You gave it a shot and it didn’t work. It was a mutual thing – she has a lot on her plate as far as ‘recovery’ goes and you’re… distracted.

You try your hardest to move past him. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Your brain tricks you into thinking that maybe, hell yeah, you can totally do this, but then you try and make the honest effort and at the end of the line you go straight back to him. There are too many what-ifs floating around, too many loose ends and unresolved maybes and you _hate_ that bullshit, way too complicated and wishy-washy and it’s not your fucking style.

Unfortunately, it’s something you gotta deal with on a day-to-day basis. Thinking about other Sburb shit is hard enough. Thinking about him is worse, and entirely unavoidable. You don’t show how much it fucking bothers you because you don’t like to show much of anything. But it’s there. It’s always lurking in the back of your brain. And when you’re alone, it rears up to the front like an asshole and it consumes fucking _everything_.

You might not be able to remember exactly what went down between you two but you sure as hell know for a fact that you miss the son of a bitch. It’s weird; thinking about all the other trolls, Kanaya and Terezi in particular, can get you down really fucking fast, but letting yourself get too lost in remembering Karkat absolutely fucking wrecks you. THIS is why you try NOT to think about it too much because as much as you’d just _love_ to be fully in control of your emotions, Sburb crapped you back out into the world as a normal, squishy, vulnerable human being and there’s really nothing you can do about it aside from pretend that shit doesn’t bother you as much as it does.

Still, even in those horrifically embarrassing moments of weakness when your chest hurts and you can’t breathe as evenly as you’d like, you want to remember. Is that fucked up or what? You want to remember, but you don’t LIKE to remember. 

Nobody told you this reset stuff was going to be easy or fun, though, did they?

You wish you had the personal wherewithal to just tell people ‘yeah, you know what, I really do miss that guy, I’d probably give up anything to see that little fucker again’, but you are the motherfucking stone of your group and compromising yourself at this rate is just a big old fat no-no. Everyone else is a delicate little flower, even John. You’re the slab of granite that they grow around. It’s the one solid way to feel important that you’ve found so far and by golly you’re going to stick right the fuck by it.

Even as Rose sits across from you at the breakfast table and remarks in a soft voice that, “You’re awfully thoughtful today”, your little Emotion Turtle sucks its head and feet right back into its shell and you let out the most immature “Pfft” that you possibly can in response. Because what hides feelings that are none of anyone else’s fucking beeswax better than a giant douchebag cloak, right?

You know she can see right through you. You don’t know why you still do that with her. Maybe because you’re stupid sometimes. That could be it.

She hums at you, as she usually does when you get all 19-year-old-infant with her or anyone else in her vicinity, and continues to idly stir at her oatmeal as she watches you with the most unreadable expression on her face.

“I’m not _thoughtful_ ,” you continue to sink into your own soft, comfortable delusions. “I’m _tired_.”

“Of course you are,” she answers. “I’d be tired, too, if I spent all night making a loud, tangled mess of my bedsheets and sighing dramatically at the ceiling instead of sleeping.”

Goddamnit. You don’t know if it’s because she used to be a Seer or what, but she always has a knack of being able to tell exactly when you’re bullshitting her.

Or maybe she’s just got your number on this one because her room is right next to yours.

“Can it,” you tell her sullenly because when you’re back is against the proverbial wall the best thing to do is be rude and inappropriate instead of humble, _duh_. “What I do to my bedsheets is none of your business.”

“In the sense that you’re clearly alluding to,” she says, her nose wrinkling just slightly up toward the bridge. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“Then stop worrying about it.”

“I’m worrying about _you_ ,” she shoots back. She’s stopped stirring her food and her hands are now folded on top of one another just beyond her bowl. That’s how you can always tell she’s trying to be strict, when she folds her hands like that.

“Why?” You lean back in your seat a little and try to look cool even though you feel uncomfortable suddenly being under a scrutinous spotlight. “We’ve talked about this before, I’m _fine_.”

You have. Numerous times, actually. Jade and John, they worry in their own ways. John does it distantly and quietly. Jade does it through a series of taunts and really hard elbow-jabs and loving insults, same as she used to before the reset. Rose is _really_ starting to grow into Roxy. Her maternal instincts are not those of ‘I want to have a baby like, yesterday’ but more along the lines of ‘My friends are my babies and I will kill a fucking mountain lion with my tiny bare hands for them’. When she worries, she’s in your face about it. She doesn’t beat around bushes, here. She rips them up from the damn roots. And sets them on fire.

That said, she doesn’t believe a word coming out of your mouth.

“The reason we talk about it continuously and go in circles with it is because you’re _clearly_ not actually fine,” she says pointedly. “You should really consider discussing it with one of us instead of internalizing all the time. You’re not recovering from the flu or a car accident or something. This is a process that only _we’re_ going to understand and relate to. We’re all getting through it by communicating with one another. You didn’t go through this all on your own, Dave.”

“I know that.”

“Then _talk_ to us. We get that you want to retain this image of the cool guy who isn’t bothered by anything, but you’re beyond the point of being able to successfully fool anyone in this house.”

“I’m not trying to fool anyone,” you blatantly lie. “I’m just going about my days, man, I’m not fucking Batman or whatever, there’s no mysterious dark side of me that I’m trying to cover up.”

She stares you down for a second.

“Dave,” she says. “I’m a little insulted that you’re still persisting that point with me.”

You flat-mouth back at her because damn, you didn’t _actually_ mean to insult her.

She goes on, “Of all people, you should know that I can relate to you on an extremely personal level.”

You were seriously hoping that she wouldn’t take it down this road.

“I lost someone too, you know.”

_Ugh_.

Sometimes you forget how much harder it must be on Rose because she actually _remembers_ the relationship she’d established in Sburb. She and Kanaya were solidly A Thing on the meteor; they had a foundation that was slowly being built on and explored. She has those memories, and she has to live with the fact that the memories are all she’s going to have to cling to.

You always wonder how she dealt with it in the beginning. You don’t ask her, of course; as much of an advocate she is about talkin’ through all your feelie-feels, she holds her own fair share of shit close to her chest. The difference between you two, you guess, is that despite all your damn efforts to hide the fact that you feel things, you’re actually kinda transparent to these people. Rose has it down to an art, and that’s fine by you. You aren’t about to be the one going around trying to yank all the demons out of people.

How do you even respond to that, anyway?

“We all lost someone, somehow,” is your really fucking lame excuse for an answer.

She lifts an eyebrow at you. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t, actually.” Your turn to lift the eyebrow and mirror your sister. “Because I don’t know where the fuck I stood when everything ended. I remember being with Terezi but not fully feeling it and after that, like, _nothing_.”

“You can’t remember anything at all after that? Not even a little bit?”

“Nope. I try constantly but it’s like trying to remember something from back when I was a baby. I know it happened but I don’t know how, or when, or what it was like.”

Her expression transforms into one of soft sympathy and it’s worse than the eyebrow and folded hands, you’d kind of rather have those back. “That must be hard,” she says quietly.

You shrug. “It is what it is.”

“This is why I feel like you should be talking more.” She props her chin on the heel of one hand. “It’ll probably be easier for you in the long run.”

You wave a hand at her and stand up to clear your long-empty plates. “You’re worrying _waaaay_ too much, Lalonde.”

You turn your back to her so you can load the dishwasher, but you can _feel_ her eyes boring into the back of your head. She finally sighs loudly, and you hear her spoon clinking against her bowl again. “Fine,” she says. “You win. For now. We’ll come back to this.”

“Sure,” you say, and hope to hell that it’s not anytime soon.

Perfectly timed, you see someone pass through the kitchen doorway in your peripherals. You lift your head to look and Jade there’s, stopping short, looking at you like she wasn’t expecting you to be in here at this very particular moment. Her face is flushed. Her eyes are slightly red and puffy behind her glasses. 

You turn and lean back against the counter, staring her down.

“Who am I beating up?” you prompt her.

“Jade?” Rose cuts in. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah!” Jade says, with so much exuberance that you actually believe her despite what her face looks like. “Yeah, I’m totally fine! Um.” She looks away from you. “Rose? Can we talk for a second?”

“Of course we can,” Rose replies.

You watch Jade look at you again. She fidgets.

You glance across the kitchen. Rose is looking at you too, expectantly.

The light bulb turns on. “Oh, you need me to leave, right?”

“Yyyeah,” Jade breathes with a smile. Probably relieved that you caught on so she doesn’t have to actually ask you to get the fuck out of her personal space.

You raise your hands, palms out, and push away from the counter’s edge. “Far be it from me to barge in on ladytimes,” you say, and give Jade a gentle nudge on your way past her. She reaches out to slap your arm in response.

You leave with a seriously unexpected sense of uneasiness that you aren't sure what to do with.


	4. Chapter 4

You think it’s going to be a slightly abnormal day. You don’t know why. You just feel it.

Typically when you have the day off from work, you use it very productively – getting in a couple of good grenade shots in Titanfall, whittling away hours on the internet, finding and saving new YouTube videos and Vines… you know, grown-up stuff. Stuff your mama could be proud of, if you had one.

And you don’t feel a single damn shred of guilt about it, either. You work hard at that grocery store, ringing shit up and swiping cards and making change and trying not to find amusement in the particularly grouchy, overdramatic couponers who swear up and down that today’s is the day you’ve decided to fuck with one individual person and rip them off utterly. Customer service definitely isn’t your calling, but you handle it well because you don’t have a quick temper. Your manager’s told you this a few times now, actually. Whenever someone has a screamer, they call you over to help out with it. You can keep a straight face through basically anything at this rate. It’s one of your charm points.

Since you’re the one who puts up with the most bullshit out of all of your co-workers, you feel entirely justified in being a lazy disgusting slob on your free days. 

Today, something feels off. Your drive to get absolutely nothing done is absent. You feel restless and twitchy. There’s no set category for what you’re feeling, either, you can’t fucking place it. You’re not usually a sufferer of general anxiety, not even with all the shit you’ve got stubbornly holed up in your head, so whenever this kind of thing happens it’s really foreign, and really uncomfortable.

You’re thinking maybe it has something to do with Jade.

See, at first, you were a little worried because she’d _obviously_ been crying and she just doesn’t do that a lot. Like, ever. Even after her nightmares, she doesn’t fucking cry. One time she woke the house up with her screaming and when you finally got her awake and snapped out of it, she groaned, said that her dream was ‘totally bogus’, and _literally_ fell right back asleep. And she threatened to curbstomp everyone when she was flooded with the obligatory ‘are you okay’s the next morning. Takes a hell of a lot of character to bounce back from intense night terrors with such a flippant fucking attitude. Part of the reason why you think, if circumstances had been different, maybe it could work between you guys.

That’s why this is bothering you so much. The little encounter in the kitchen happened two days ago and since then the worry has only expanded. Something just isn’t right with the whole situation; you can tell even though you don’t know any details about it.

What’s worse is that Rose has been informed. And maybe you’re just being paranoid, but you get the sense like maybe the _both_ of them are sort of avoiding you, now. Which makes everything THAT much more suspicious.

And distracting.

Even right now, you’re not even paying attention to your computer screen. Just staring at the wall above it. _Thinking_.

What is this bullshit.

A few thoughts casually saunter across the front of your brain. You could sneak onto Jade’s computer and see what her web history has been like. But she doesn’t have a job and she’s home; safe to say she’s probably ON the computer right now. You could see if John is home and get him all into cahoots with you to distract her long enough to—no, wait, he’s working tonight so he’s sleeping. Maybe you can just corner Rose and threaten to burn her books one by one in a gigantic bon fire until she confesses. But that’s _books_ , bro, you don’t touch the stuff.

Maybe you could entice her out with treats like a puppy (she kind of reminds you of one sometimes, damned if you know why) and flash step into her room before she figures out what’s going on and lock her out. But then you’d have to leave the room when you’re done and you know she’ll be on the other side of the door waiting to violently murder you.

…you decide you could take your chances on that.

Jade’s room is down the hall and around the corner from your own, nestled away from the main cluster of bedrooms that dominates this particular floor of the house. As a kid, you always thought that living in a mansion would be the fucking raddest thing in the world, but now that you do, you find it to be a bit… much. Lots of space and good acoustics, sure, but do you really have to spend more than an actual minute getting from one room to another on the same floor?

You _could_ also be living in a trailer park back in Texas right now, though, so you’re not _technically_ complaining.

You don’t have any treats on-hand and you’re on a mission, here, there’s no _time_ to go all the way down to the kitchen and procure any, so you brainstorm on your little trek between your room and hers on a similar strategy. Using your manly wiles _could_ work, but Jade has never exactly been a full-time, fanatical swooner over you so that might prove to be tricky. She also, like Rose, can somehow see directly through your carefully and _masterfully_ constructed walls. And she’s a lot more physical with you when she catches on that you’re putting up a sort of front and trying to trick her. Not in a sexy way, either.

Your confidence level has gone from 100 down to like, 5 by the time you reach her closed door. That’s not so good.

Always one to inevitably just fly by the seat of your pants, you ditch the idea of strategizing entirely and jump right into the fucking shark pool, impulsively giving the door a quick few knocks and saying, “Jade, you in there?”

You lean in a little closer to the door when you hear a very soft rustling from behind the other side of it and sure enough, you hear footsteps approaching. NOW is when you start to think that maybe you were heading in the right direction with the strategizing because you basically got nothin’ right now and your improvisational skills seem to have reset along with the rest of the goddamn world.

Welp.

The door cracks open and half of Jade’s face appears in the opening. “Yeeess?” she says, and sounds like she’s in much better spirits today. This bodes well for you.

You lean casually against the outer edge of the door frame and undoubtedly look like the coolest asshole in the entire world, especially considering you don’t have a lot of space and are seconds away from slipping and stumbling. Hold it together, Strider. “Sup.”

How her panties don’t immediately hit the floor after that one, you have no idea. At least she opens the door a little more and smirks at you. “What do you want?”

“You can’t answer a question with a question.”

“You should make things sound like questions when you want them to be questions, then.”

She’s got you there. Playing the Cool Guy routine is obviously not going to get you anywhere, here, because she’s seen it out of you so many times and she can call your bullshit like a pro. You decide to switch tactics, as subtly and naturally as you can manage.

You raise a hand and lightly rub the back of your neck. You pause for _just_ the right amount of time and look down a little, making it obvious with your shades on that you’re averting your eyes.

“Well. Y’know,” you mumble, and shrug awkwardly. This routine, which is Humble Guy, is very rarely ever used and is only saved for the most extreme and important of circumstances. You keep it under wraps until desperate times call for desperate measures, and now that you’re going along with this your curiosity to get your hands on her laptop and see what kind of weird-ass secrecy BS not only _made her cry_ but is also making Rose act fucking funny, you feel like this is one of those desperate times.

It’s a delicate procedure, Humble Guy, and you need to take caution with everything that you do. Every little crease in your brow has to be just so, every pause has to be perfectly timed, and every gesture you make needs to be as far away from your usual douchey self as possible. Fortunately you can’t recall a time when you used this tactic on her, which may be _extremely_ advantageous for you.

You flick your gaze up to her and she’s just watching you, blankly and expectantly.

“I’m… I mean, I just wanna check up on you,” you continue very carefully, keeping your voice soft like you’re embarrassed to be confessing this to her. Which you normally would be, actually, so this exercise is pretty helpful in getting your _actual_ concerns out without _actually_ having to be embarrassed over them. Your mind works in amazingly fucked up ways, it’s fantastic. “Been thinkin’ about the other day when you were like… upset, you know? I know you said you were fine but it’s kind of obvious that you _weren’t_ and…”

There’s the heavy pause that you’ve been keeping in your inventory. This is a good time to use the heavy pause, when you’re peaking in the confession. 

This is also a good time to use the big, loud sigh. You do just that, and shake your head a little, and push away from the doorframe to turn around and start back down the hall – fast enough to look normal, slow enough to give her a reaction time. “You know what, nevermind, forget I said anything.”

That line, that exact line _verbatim_ , is an intense trigger for feminine curiosity. It’s a phenomenon that you can never and will never be able to explain, but it even works on Rose in the correct situations. Maybe it doesn’t work for every dude, only dudes like you who are usually so up-front about their shit, but you’re thankful for it because you have utilized it to your benefit many, many times.

You keep walking and you’re about to hit the corner, nearly defeated and thinking that maybe Jade is a lot wiser than you give her credit for, when you finally hear, “Hold on.”

Bingo.

You turn to look back at her, but just a little. Not dramatically, either, don’t wanna overdo it. She walks closer toward you, her eyes squinting a little bit. “Are you _seriously_ worried about me, or are you just trying to get me to gossip about stuff?”

“I’m legit worried,” you reply, and you’re not lying. You ARE worried. And you AREN’T trying to get her to talk. Scheming to look at her computer and trying to get her to talk is not the same thing. You have exercised the demons; your conscience is clear.

You know you’re 100% _on point_ because her entire face just softens right up and she crosses her arms in front of her. “I told you, everything’s totally okay,” she says, and smiles. “I’m kinda glad that you’re all worried, though. Means you’re not as all cool and uncomplicated as you want us to think.”

“I am too still cool,” you argue, suddenly genuinely a little offended. “Shit, I could be worried about fifty different things at once and still be cool. My level of coolness is not directly affected by any concerns I might be harbouring, thank you very much.”

“Your—“ she uses air-quotes on you for this one, god love her. “—‘level of coolness’, huh?”

“Listen, Harley.” You’re smiling against your will. This girl, man, she has mastered the right way to flirt with you. Teasing and insults, all the way down. “You wanna take this outside, ‘cause I’m more th—“

The doorbell ringing downstairs cuts you off. You and Jade, your expressions fall and you stare at one another for a second. You feel your pulse spike a little, totally against your will.

Isn’t that fucking sad? You can live through an apocalypse, watch people you love die right in front of you, risk your life to bring everything back… and a doorbell rings and you hit the goddamn roof. It’s not like the household is used to visitors, at this point. Even John’s dad doesn’t ring the doorbell when he visits, he just traipses right in like he lives there, too.

Before you can say or do anything, Jade very suddenly screams, “THAT’S FOR ME!” into your face before shoving you bodily out of the way and hauling ass around the corner. You have stumbled at the force behind her exuberance and are now against the wall, staring after her and listening to her footsteps pound down the stairs.

Now you’re _really_ curious. Jade held onto a couple of outside friends from high school but she doesn’t talk to them much now that you’ve all graduated – you’re wondering if the crying and this unexpected visit has anything to do with one another.

But you can’t worry about that right now. You have a mission to accomplish.

You waltz right into her wide open room and sit down on the edge of her bed, shifting the laptop up near her pillow around to face you. You open it up and, as you were expecting but really kind of hoping not to find, are met with a password screen. 

You spend the next ten or fifteen minutes typing in random bullshit that you think could maybe slide as a password that she would use, but you get the same prissy error message every time. After awhile you start typing in curse words just because the error is frustrating you and you feel like swearing at it. You maybe should have thought this through a little better; of _course_ someone like Jade would have her computer password-protected. What REALLY raises your suspicions, though, is why she would go to the trouble to log off and close the thing when you drew her out of the room.

You have been outsmarted.

Harley: 1. Strider: What the fuck.

You sigh and close the computer, pushing it back toward Jade’s pillow. Well. That was a lost cause. At least you got to pull off the sad, sorry attempt without her being around to potentially shank you for it. You just sort of wished that you didn’t just assume everything you wanted to know would just be sitting out in the open right there, unprotected. 

Well. Whatever. A for effort.

You start to make your way back to your room, but when you reach the door Jade is suddenly hustling back up the stairs and hurrying by you. 

If you weren’t dying of curiosity before, you are now. 

The foyer where the front door is basically a thru-traffic spot that leads from the living room to the kitchen where the staircase spits you out. If she left anyone down here, most likely it’ll be in the living room since that’s where she’s left friends before while she’s doing something else. On your way to investigate, you swing by the fridge and grab yourself a soda. It’s for your thirst, your need for sugar since you haven’t emerged from your room since way earlier in the morning, and something to hold and look cool with if you have to stop and flirt with someone. Jade’s got some cute friends. 

Unfortunately for you, none of said cute friends are hanging out waiting for her. You don’t even get as far as the living room.  

Jade’s visitor is standing around like an uncomfortable, out of place alien by the door in the foyer. You get it; you’d be uncomfortable too if you just entered a gigantic and admittedly very strangely decorated mansion and were kind of abandoned by the front door. Guy’s looking around like he doesn’t have a clue what to do with himself. The almost childish way he’s leaning around the archway on the other side of him to peer into the living room kind of makes you want to pity him. Poor sucker. 

Hey, if Jade’s going to be uncharacteristically inhospitable, you might as well bite the bullet and scope the scene out a little bit closer. 

You alert the stranger to your presence by opening your soda. The sharp hiss and click of the can makes him jump as his head instantly whips around to face you.

And something happens.

Something big.

How do you even begin to fucking describe what happens.

It is the strongest sense of déjà vu that you have ever experienced in your life. It’s so strong that it freezes all of your limbs and you _physically_ can’t move. This stranger, this person who you know for a fact that you’ve never seen before, his eyes meet yours and you are completely physically and mentally paralyzed. Not having control over yourself is a massive issue for you and you try your damndest even through your haze of confusion to think straight, expressively react, move a finger, fucking _do anything_ but you can’t. All you can do is see, right at the forefront of your brain as if it was in front of your eyes, this unfamiliar face staring back at you and watch as things start to flash into place, the grey skin, the yellow eyes, the fangs and the horns and you’re going crazy, you’re _definitely_ on your way to the fucking loony bin at this point, this actually CANNOT be happening right now.

You gasp in a breath and you're snapped out of it. So is he.

He drops the duffel bag he's been holding. You drop your completely full can of soda. It hits the floor and explodes all over the bottom of your jeans but that's not why you take a couple of steps back and accidentally slam yourself into the corner of the doorway leading in from the kitchen.

This isn't happening.

This is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

Jade comes down the stairs. She stops a few steps away from the bottom. The three of you are still. The three of you are trying not to breathe too loud. You know she's there and she wants to say something but you can't look at her for something comforting. You can't look at her for an explanation. 

You keep looking dead ahead.

At this _uncomfortable_

_out of place_

_alien_

who takes in this terrified, shuddering breath and whispers, "Dave…?"

You're out of the house faster than the next fucking heartbeat.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> exposition exposition rahrahrah!
> 
> just roll with me here, guys.
> 
> * * *

You’re in a tree.

How juvenile can you actually possibly get?

Texas didn’t have much to offer as far as trees were concerned, but there were a few in your neighborhood when you were way younger (in the first life, not this second one; you figure both lives had the same pasts leading up to the day you woke up again but you also don’t think about that too hard or too much because your brain might explode) so you got a little bit of a chance to practice climbing them when Bro wasn’t around to drag you back down by the back of your shirt. That, on top of the fact that you still have full-body muscle memory of all the crazy shit you got to do in Sburb, has basically turned you into the world’s greatest tree climber. You never thought it would legitimately come in handy.

You have a fucking headache.

You’re not sure what to classify that feeling as. Déjà vu is the closest you can get but in a way it’s also pretty different. Not as fleeting, not as harmless. Whatever that was has left you with a faint pain in the back of your skull and a thousand and one questions that you DO NOT want to ask on the tip of your tongue.

This is actually happening.

You can’t believe this is happening.

You’ve been out here for about an hour now, probably. It’s a little surprising that Jade hasn’t flung herself out the door after you but she probably realizes that you need some space, and you’re thankful for that. You’re also a little pissed off at her, but you think she realizes _that_ , too.

It’s him. You know it’s him.

You don’t know how it’s possible or why he’s here or what circumstances have transformed him into what appears to be another human being, but you know for a fucking fact, undeniably, that the person standing downstairs in the foyer looking put-upon and awkward was _him_.

He looks nothing like his old self. He looks entirely _too much_ like his old self. How the fuck does someone pull that off? You wish you could describe it. 

The sudden yearning for a cigarette between your fingers or a shot glass against your palm is nearly fucking overwhelming. You don’t indulge in either of the two horrifically bad habits often, but the urge becomes ridiculously hard to ignore when you’re under super severe amounts of stress. Luckily you don’t find yourself in that position often.

Unluckily, you are balls-deep in the worst possible example of that position right now.

Another large cluster of minutes goes by. Ten, twenty, fuck knows how many. Finally, you see movement just beyond the branch in front of you and you lift your shades away from your eyes, squinting at the figure approaching your tree.

The figure stops in front of it and crosses its arms.

“How did you find me?” you ask Jade flatly.

“You’re like, six feet off of the ground and clearly visible, Dave,” she replies.

You got nothin’ to say to that so you just kind of glower at her.

“Look,” she exhales. “can you come inside or something?”

“Nah, I’m good, I’m busy with other stuff right now.”

“Busy with _what_?”

“Being avoidant.”

“Being a big giant diaper-baby pouting in a tree, you mean.”

You glower harder. “Careful where you sling your insults, Harley,” you tell her honestly. “I’m not exactly thrilled with you right now.”

That gets her, because she can’t argue with it. Her arms uncross and she stares up at you.

“Please, Dave?” she asks after a minute. “We should at least talk about stuff. I know you’re mad but you’re just going to make it worse if you don’t let me clear anything up.”

“I ain’t mad,” you say. 

She gives you this crooked-mouthed look like, yeah right, asshole.

You add, “I just don’t react well to utter betrayal, is all.”

Maybe you’re feeling a little more bitterness than you thought.

Jade’s expression falls again. “…Dave, I don’t wanna argue with you while you’re up in a tree.”

“Tough. I’m in the tree and you’re arguing with me so that’s just the way it’s playing out.”

Now she’s meeting your stubborn expression with her own. See, Jade isn’t like any other girl you’ve ever met. Most girls, they’d either scoff at you and give up because you’re being a goddamn brat and it’s not worth arguing with you, or get SUPER emotional and argue even harder until they make themselves upset and somehow the fact that they’re crying inevitably comes back around to being _your_ fault. But not Jade. Instead of continuing to verbally grab your shoulders and shake you or retreating out of frustration, Jade moves forward and starts hoisting herself up into the tree.

While wearing a dress.

Good old Jade.

“Dude, really?”

“Shh, shut up,” she barks back at you. “If you’re not going to come down and talk to me…” She pauses as she drags herself up along a tricky branch. “…then I’m coming up to talk to you, instead.”

You can’t lie and say that you didn’t see this coming at least a little bit.

“Pretty determined to have this little kumbaya session, aren’t you?” you ask, and even though you’re being petulant and pointedly NOT helping her finish her trek up to your level, you’re keeping an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t wind up with a broken neck. 

“Well,” she grunts, reaching the branch you’re sitting on and carefully getting settled on it, slowly scooting closer to you. “Obviously I probably should have handled this better—“

“Agreed,” you cut in without thinking. “This whole thing is a great big dick move.”

“—and I want to talk it out with you,” she finishes, undeterred.

You stare her down and she stares right back like she’s challenging you to tell her to go away for trying to at the very least make _something_ about this whole mess right.

You definitely couldn’t bring yourself to tell her to go away, but if she wants to hash this out, she’s gonna have to put up with you being honest. Stubborn aggravation aside, you really do kind of feel like a giant, gullible piece of garbage right now and yeah, there’s some deceit in there that you weren’t expecting. Maybe that sounds overdramatic or like you’re blowing stuff out of proportion, but shit, man, just because your face is neutral 98% of the time doesn’t mean you’re immune to feeling like shit when your friends lie to you. Regardless of what you look like on the outside you are _just barely_ holding yourself together right now. You’re like a cat; if you’re in an astronomically horrible amount of pain, you most likely won’t show much outright until it’s literally ripping you completely apart. It’s a Strider blessing and a Strider curse.

If you had a one-to-ten scale right now, one being totally chill and ten being seconds away from a full-blown unapologetic panic attack, you’re sitting on the far edge of a nine and dangling your legs casually over the side.

You break your stare away from her and look out toward the mansion, just for something else to put your eyes on. 

“You shouldn’t have kept that from me,” you mumble, and it feels like something twists a little bit in your chest.

“I know,” she agrees softly. “That was wrong of me.”

“How long have you even known.”

“Only a few days.”

Now, at least, the kitchen thing makes more sense. “And you told Rose immediately, but not me.”

She hesitates, then says, “It’s a little harder on Rose, actually, if you can believe that.”

You laugh a little, softly and without humour. A noise to fill the gap. “I can’t see how, but okay. Sure.”

She chews on the inside of her cheek.

You give her a small pocket of unresponsiveness before you keep going, “Whatever. You guys knew, you didn’t tell me, I found out, I got pissed, and now it’s done.”

“You’re not mad anymore?”

“I don’t know what I’m feeling right now.” Half a lie. You _sort of_ know how you’re feeling. You just don’t know how to properly express it without compromising your coolness.

The two of you sit in contemplative silence for a few minutes.

“How…” you ask slowly, tentatively, like you’re not even sure you wanted to start asking to begin with but there it goes. “How did you even manage this.”

You slide your eyes over to her and she’s smirking, just barely. “Pesterchum.”

Oh my god.

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“You’re that surprised?”

You laugh again, but this time you kind of let that bitterness come through a little. You shove your hands up under your shades and scrub at your eyes. “Shit, I tried Pesterchum for years. _Years_ , Jade. You mean to tell me that after I gave up is when the stupid fucker decided to give it a shot?”

She leans in a bit closer, enough to bump her shoulder against yours. “Calm down,” she says gently. “I know you’re all screwed up right now. I get that. But… maybe don’t be too frustrated until you’ve talked to him.”

Your hands come to rest over your mouth as you continue to digest information that you really don’t fucking want right now. “I saw his bag,” you mumble between your fingers. “how long are you inviting him to stay with us?”

“Don’t be mad. I said a week.”

“That’s way too long, Harley.”

Her eyebrows knit together. “Seriously? After all this time, having no contact and thinking that they were all dead or didn’t exist anymore, now that he’s here you don’t _want_ him here?”

“Pretty fucked up, isn’t it?”

“I’d say so, yes.”

You take in a deep breath and let it out slowly. You don’t want him here for your own selfish reasons. This is the kind of situation that really needs to be introduced gradually. Baby steps. You should have found out that he was even _alive_ first, let that little tidbit digest properly, and then slowly be introduced to the idea of him showing up on your fucking doorstep. This is a little too much, too fast, too unexpected. You don’t much like surprises to begin with, let alone ones that physically and mentally affect you in ways that make you uncomfortable.

Maybe it isn’t so selfish.

Maybe you’re not at fault, here.

Doesn’t matter. 

“He’s been through a lot,” Jade says solemnly. “More than we have. Apparently the game warped his chat client around a little considering how important its use became to us, and he had a hell of a time trying to access everything.”

You immediately feel skeptical. It’s a defense mechanism when your mood has already gone to shit. “He told you this?”

She nods.

“But our systems ran like they always used to.”

“Because we won, and things got reset _for us_. He can’t really describe it too clearly, either, but what he’s managed to piece together is that because they used an alien program to contact us in the first place—“

“Trollian,” you suddenly remember and blurt out.

“Yes!” Jade says. “Trollian. That was their Pesterchum. Because they used that initially, and the game basically got rid of it, he couldn’t access anything that could link to us.”

You don’t wanna say that you smell bullshit for no reason, but… “He could have just went online and downloaded Pesterchum if he was so desperate to reach out.”

“That’s the thing,” Jade says hurriedly. “Pesterchum only exists because we used it before. But even though it exists, it’s very hard to find. You’ve never tried searching for it, have you?”

“…no, I never bothered. Never had a reason.”

“See? Our computers already had it installed, but the game must have deemed it past its prime or something because when we reset, the program didn’t. It’s considered an outdated client now. You need to be _really_ smart to find it and get it running properly, especially on newer computers.”

You are so confused. Your headache is steadily getting worse. “I’m still not getting it.”

“Okay, think of it like this, think of Pesterchum as like an old DOS program. They exist. Some people still use them. But they’re outdated and old and really not even worth having anymore. It’s still possible to get something like DOS onto a computer, but you have to really want it because it’s basically, like, being shrouded by newer and better systems and getting lost in this sea of new technology. People barely even know it ever existed at this point. See what I mean?”

Surprisingly enough, that makes sense to you. Kinda. You nod mutely.

“Since he never had Pesterchum specifically to begin with, he had to get his hands on it. And that was… you know. After dealing with everything else that he had to deal with.”

You can’t help but be curious, and you _really_ want to ask, but you don’t. She probably wouldn’t even tell you, anyways. Not her place, talk to him instead, blah blah blah. “He was never a shining star with programs and shit, how did he manage to get Pesterchum?”

“It’s amazing what time and a LOT of determination can make someone do. He really wanted to find us.” Her turn to look away; she looks down at the ground below you, hooking her ankles together and swinging her legs slightly. “He’s only had the program successfully running for two years or so.”

Right when you gave up on it.

How fucking funny and ironic.

She goes on, “I started mine up on a whim. A total whim. And there he was. His name, just… just sitting there on my list, like old times. I opened up a new chat to say something and saw that he was already typing in one. To me. It took him awhile to finally send anything, but… it was worth waiting for. Still types in gray font. Still types in all caps.” You feel a lump rise up in your throat completely out of fucking nowhere at that. You struggle to swallow it back down. “Probably to comfort him or something. An old piece of himself to hold onto, I guess. I mean, he had to start over as an entirely different species, and apparently he remembers a lot more than we do, too. Basically everything up until the very end, and that’s when it cuts out for him. All of those memories, all of the stuff we lost. He has them intact.”

“God,” you whisper, and you feel yourself crack a little.

“Yeah,” Jade agrees. 

“ _Jesus_ ,” you hiss for emphasis.

“Mmhm,” she hums softly, obviously not realizing exactly how much this actually complicates things for you.

Another stretch of silence passes between you and you try very hard to settle the uneasy anxious ball of horror lurching around in your stomach.

Finally she asks, “Are you okay?”

You are not okay.

You are not even close.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy one-day-late 413 y'all. B)
> 
> * * *

You know what you’re about to face when Jade finally manages to coax you down from your childish hideout. 

You know _exactly_ what you’re about to face. 

You don’t want to do this, but you know that you should.

It would be totally possible for you to avoid someone in your own home for an entire week, not to get you wrong. The mansion is _ginormous_ and there are plenty of places to go where you can be hidden away, especially from someone who doesn’t know the layout like you do. You could do it. And you could pull it off.

But you’re gonna man up and do this, because despite how rapidly your panic is growing and expanding as you get closer to the front door, you know that you’ll be worse off if you _don’t_ sit down and have a little chit-chat with your old best friend who you totally thought was dead or non-existent for like almost six straight years. 

You try to think about what you might want to say on your walk back. Maybe something meaningful, which isn’t really your style but seeing as this is a special occasion you’re willing to put yourself out there at least a little. Or maybe falling back on your ‘cool’ default and going with something dry and witty – which will only be possible if you can _actually_ stay collected. You have a free and surprisingly wide range of reactions to choose from, here, but in the end you come up with absolutely zip. The only thing that you’re totally sure of is that you are fucking _dying_ to know what happened with him and the rest of the trolls after the reset. Some explanation as to what happened after your flimsy mind blanked out would eventually be nice, too.

‘Eventually’ being the keyword, there.

Like you said before. Baby steps.

You’re led with Jade’s hand on one of your arms back to the mansion and toward the living room. He’s in there, along with John and Jade, sitting across from one another on the adjacent couches. And there’s that feeling again. That almost-nauseating, dizzy feeling, the moment your eyes find him. You stumble to a stop at the doorway and everyone is suddenly looking at you. The atmosphere is uncomfortable and strange, like a bomb is about to drop except the bomb isn’t _actually_ dropping, it’s right here, sitting in the living room made of flesh and bone and everybody has just sort of resigned themselves to being caught in the inevitable fucking ka-boom. John’s eyes are puffy. So are Rose’s. They’ve been crying, you can tell. You can’t really judge them for it, either. 

“Come on, Dave,” Jade murmurs to you, and gives your arm a small push.

You tighten your mouth into a line and move further into the room, taking a seat stiffly on the arm of the couch opposite him. You’re kind of clumsy because you aren’t watching what you’re doing; you can’t take your eyes off of him and he’s apparently caught in the same predicament, watching you with this semi-guarded, cautionary expression on his face that looks so freakishly like the way he always used to be, with the dark eyebrows drawn in and the small creases across his forehead and _Christ al-fucking-mighty_ you’re actually getting a good look at him now.

Wearing a blank expression, you think he’d probably be next to unrecognizable. Aside from the usual traits that are easy enough to pick out – black hair, hazel eyes, no obvious or decipherable nationality – he’s a surprisingly generic looking human dude, but his _expression_ is what brings the old Karkat completely to life in him. The way he’s looking at you right now is especially familiar. It’s giving you chills. You have no idea if they’re good ones or bad ones.

You’re straight-up staring at one another.

You don’t even take your eyes away from him when you feel Rose stand up next to you, tugging at John to follow suit, silently herding everyone else out of the room and leaving you alone with him.

Your face feels hot and your stomach hurts a little. Your pulse is thrumming steadily in your temples. No matter how hard you try to clear your head and map out a verbal game plan for this encounter, you literally just… can’t. This must be what stage fright is like.

He breaks his gaze away and clears his throat. You’re selfishly thankful that he’s taking the reins on this one because you’re at such a loss that you don’t know what to do with yourself.

The breath he takes in is so deep that you can hear it from where you’re sitting.

“Nice to see you, too,” he says sullenly, and his voice is the same, maybe a little bit deeper but exactly the same otherwise and you get that unsettling dizziness again. 

You clench your eyes shut for a second, until it passes.

“I, uh.” You swallow back your discomfort. “Yeah. It is, though. Good to see you.” 

He’s still not looking at you. The floor sure seems fascinating to him, right now. “Yeah,” he agrees. 

You both somehow turn into bashful wieners and let silence overwhelm the room for a few minutes again.

“You look really different,” you say, because someone should be saying _something_. Your intentions are good but really you feel like you just kind of sound like an idiot.

He lets out this humourless huff of air and his eyes lift to you again and _fuck_ you see him in there so well right now because he looks bitter, he always _used_ to be bitter. The skin and eye colour and some of the facial features have changed a little but he’s Karkat, no fucking question, this is your old bestie, sitting across from you and looking at you like he’s this jaded, abused and neglected little puppy dog that just wants to find a fucking home already.

The room warms a little. The tension dissipates slightly. You are being torn in half at the seams right now but you’re managing to hold yourself together. You were terrified leading up to this but now you maybe feel the slightest hint of brimming excitement and you take that for a good sign. Distantly, somehow, you’re proud of yourself for at least being able to pull out of the heebie jeebies.

“You don’t,” comes his reply, and the rasp in his voice is telltale enough that he’s feeling _a lot of things_. Nice to know you’re both in the same boat, you guess.

What exactly was Jade hoping to accomplish with this whole thing, anyway? Did she just expect you to throw yourselves into each other’s arms and cry about how long it’s been and how good it will be to catch up? Situation’s a little more complicated than that, a little more strained. You remember how much you liked him back in Sburb, yes, and you even remember kissing him a couple of times. Nothing serious, just dumb shit that dumb teenagers do, even alien teenagers. He had his whole black-crush on you and you were like ‘nah’ and after that things sort of dissolve in an amnesiatic cloud. What’s killing you – what’s _really_ killing you – is not knowing if things reached a point beyond what you can recall.

You’re getting an ominous feeling that you’re missing out on something fucking huge.

“What… even happened?” you finally drop your balls and ask him. “I thought you guys all disappeared. Because the game… you know. Just seemed to poof you out of existence.”

There you go. You did your part. Now it’s on him. You don’t know if you’re properly mentally prepared for this, but you’re gonna get through it anyway. You have to, for your own long-term sanity.

He licks his lips and clears his throat again, louder. You slide from the armrest of the couch onto its cushions. Something tells you you’re gonna need to sit down properly for this.

He tells you, slowly and precisely, what he’s pieced together since the day he woke up after the reset.

Summarized, the trolls were reset along with the game and not only regressed in age, just like you, but were also ‘turned’ human. He thinks it’s because humans won, so your species became the default. The game gave them a completely new life. It even went so far as to set up blank template parents who remember everything from their fabricated childhoods, starting with the days of the births. Memories that they obviously didn’t have because they didn’t live through them. Fucked up, right? Completely fucked up. Fucked up to a point that’s beyond your understanding. So entirely fucked up that Karkat has apparently gone through four years of therapy just to be able to cope with it. He doesn’t talk about that part in detail. You wouldn’t, either, if you were in his place.

Since he got new parents, his last name is different. All of the trolls have new last names. This has made it basically next to impossible to search for and rally up the gang. So far, he says, he’s only found two other trolls and they’re at completely opposite ends of the country. Sollux is on the west coast. Feferi is down toward Georgia. Karkat wound up smack dab in the middle of shitsville, midwest. South Dakota, to be exact.

Now you know why Jade said that this whole thing is harder on Rose.

The entire time he’s talking, you feel funny like this is all some kind of weird, crazy-lucid dream that you’re probably only minutes away from snapping out of, but you really like that he’s here no matter _what_ form he’s in so you’re not rushing the process, just sitting back and letting it play out until your alarm goes off. But there’s no alarm. You’re not asleep. He’s not a dream. A thing that you gave up hope for years ago is taking place _right now_ , in your living room, and it all feels so surreal that even with the evidence in front of you, interacting with you, you’re STILL having a hard time accepting any of it as reality. Your dreams have tricked you so many fucking times by now that you almost feel like Karkat is just a projection screen and there’s someone on the other side of it snickering behind their hand, waiting for you to fall for it completely before it’s all torn down.

His face is mangling your guts and his voice is making you want to dig your fingers into your thighs where they’re resting. You really missed this. You really missed _him_. His presence is weakening the _fuck_ out of your resolve and you’re borderline terrified that you’re going to snap and lose your cool at any fucking moment.

You’re standing your ground the best you can, though. Show as little as possible on the outside; that’s been the way you deal with shit your entire life. Lives. Whatever.

“Sssooo…” you say slowly, collecting yourself. “Basically you’re saying that the game gave you all new families and new identities so you could… be a part of this timeline or something?”

“Obviously I don’t know exactly what the motives are,” he tells you. “But yeah, that sums it up.”

“So you’re just… a human being now. Just a normal kid.”

His eyes squint at you slightly. “Describe ‘normal’ in this circumstance, because I can bet that our definitions will be totally different.”

You guess he’s got a point, there.

“And these parents, you’ve never seen them before? Ever?”

“No,” he says. “The game created them for me.” His mouth twists into an unconvincing, wry smile. “All characters need a history of some kind, right? Even the unimportant ones. The game needed a way to properly insert us into society and I guess this was the best option.”

“I don’t get it. The game’s over. It’s done. We ended it, six years ago. How can it still be dominating shit when it’s not even a thing anymore?”

His eyebrows raise a little. “You seriously think the game is over just because you beat it?”

You don’t like what he’s insinuating. 

“It’s not over. It’s just _literally_ been reset. Get it?”

You don’t. Well, you do but you don’t. You get that it was reset because you went through it, but you don’t get what he’s trying to tell you. Clearly it shows on your face that you don’t get it because he rolls his eyes at you and the dizziness whenever he does something familiar like that is starting to get annoying. It’s growing weaker and weaker the longer you sit down with him but it’s still present, and it’s still disorienting you a little and pissing you off.

“Sburb is _life_ , Dave. It’s reality. We unleashed it when our session started and it’s just been a big messy fucking downward spiral ever since. We can’t delete it and we can’t _end_ it. You didn’t beat the game itself, not exactly. You just beat the obstacles it threw at you. Now we’re coasting in the aftermath.”

“I hate every word coming out of your mouth,” you tell him honestly. Your stomach is starting to hurt again.

“Yeah, well. I didn’t really like having to deal with the idea of my fucking species and home planet _not existing_ anymore, either, so I get how you feel.” His tone is sour, dripping with shameless sarcasm. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Calm down,” you tell him. “I wasn’t discrediting any of the shit you’ve been dealt, don’t get me wrong.”

His frown remains stubbornly in place but he sinks back into the couch a little.

“I just…” You pause. You just what, exactly? Now that he’s openly called you out how do you word _anything_ from this point on without sounding like a big selfish crybaby? Sure, the idea of Sburb being actual reality freaks you right the fuck out and of course it’s all just a _little_ more to digest than you would really like, but if this asshole can go through ALL of that hell and neck-deep amounts of loss and still maintain some semblance of sanity, maybe you actually _have_ been indulging in a bit of a subconscious pity party.

His eyebrows arch upward again, waiting for you to finish your thought.

“…yeah, I don’t know,” you conclude lamely, dismissively waving a hand in his direction. God you really just don’t fucking know. “Just a lot of information to take in right now at once, blah blah.”

He hums neutrally and keeps watching you. You watch him back.

An appropriately subject-changing amount of time slithers by and he speaks up again, quietly, “I actually did miss you, you know.”

You swallow impulsively. “I missed you, too.” Because fuck it, you really did.

He averts his gaze to his hands, wringing them together. The movement strikes you as uncharacteristic but then again, you don’t really know him now as well as you used to. “How much do you remember?”

That right there is a golden fucking question.

“Not as much as you do,” you reply.

He visibly winces a little.

“Like how much, though?” he presses. His voice is straining again.

“Idunno the timeline exactly, man, maybe like… somewhere into the second year on the meteor?” You HAVE thought about this before and tried to place exactly where things start tapering off. That’s the most accurate guess you can come up with.

He continues to stare down at his hands and breathe evenly and you can’t help but wonder what he’s thinking about. If you were a little paranoid that you were forgetting something really important before, you’re scared half to death over it now.

“Um—“ you start, and your voice cracks like a little bitch. It gets his attention again and you want to kick yourself in your own teeth. You clear your throat and try again. “Why?”

Now his gaze is solely on you and maybe it’s just that paranoia talking but you could _swear_ that there is all the pain in the goddamn world behind those eyes. You already know he’s not gonna tell you jack shit, not yet. The two of you have always been really different in a lot of ways, but your similarities have been just as prominent. He’s pulling the same crap that you pull when you really want to say stuff, like you kind of just want to word-vomit it all over the fucking place but something holds you back. Right now, something is _definitely_ holding him back and if you remember correctly when he’s like this, just like you, no amount of cajoling or prying is going to get any of it out of him.

Which is why when he stands up and mumblingly excuses himself, you let him go without arguing with him. The last thing he needs is for you to be a nosy pain in the ass.

You have your own shit to mull over, anyway.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> finally getting into the meat of emotional stuff wwwooooo.
> 
> * * *

It’s the next evening, after an entire day of hiding out and being a coward, when you’re warned by a sheepish and wary Jade, poking her head into your room, that you’re going to be summoned for a Family Dinner in a little while.

The kids typically have free reign of the house; you can eat when you want, come and go when you want, and do what you want within a set list of reasonable rules and limitations. Bro isn’t your dad and Roxy isn’t your mom – as long as you’re not defacing, breaking, or soiling anything that doesn’t belong to you, they trust you to adhere to common decency and they leave you alone.

Family Dinners mean that something big is going on with someone in the house. Without even having to think about it, you know _exactly_ what this one is going to be about. There’s a guest in Roxy’s home, after all. It would only be in her nature to gather everyone for a sit-down meal to make his visit even more uncomfortable than it probably already is.

You consider for a few minutes trying to talk her out of it. Much easier said than done, as Roxy is destructively headstrong. She’s got more stubbornness than even YOU do, which is a very tall and very tough title to fight for. You also consider faking illness to get out of it but that blatantly has not worked in the past. The last time you tried to pull that shit with Roxy, she sent Bro to bodily remove you from your room and sit you down at your dinner plate, which contained a bottle of Tums, a bottle of cold medicine, and a bottle of aspirin. It was a point well made and well received, with you glowering at Roxy over your little pharmaceutical cocktail while she raised her wine glass at you from across the table, instructing you to ‘pick yer poison, kididdle’. You’ve never tried to get out of Family Dinner again, not even when you were actually sick.

Then again, you have never wanted to miss a Family Dinner more than you do right now.

You don’t care much for the so-called spotlight. Being the center of attention is great when you’re in the mood for it, but it’s not like you go out seeking it or anything. When it’s on you, cool, it’s on you, you’ll do something stupid or cheesy and make people laugh, satisfied that you’re still the good ol’ Dave Strider that they know and love(??), and move on.

The spotlight is gonna be all the fuck over you like a needy date tonight, you and Karkat both, and it’s just… not something that sounds especially appealing right now. Figures, the one time when you feel like maybe some quiet, personal introspection would do you a lot of good is when Roxy breaks out the fucking party hats.

These people are turning seeing Karkat again into some kind of painstaking chore for you. You don’t like that.

Your focus suddenly veers away from casually brainstorming ways to miss Family Dinner without your brother running a fucking katana through your midsection and heads straight into a different direction. 

There’s this term Rose told you about once – she spoke it in really nice, really fluid French but you’ll be fucked if you can remember what it was. The translation was something like ‘wit in the staircase’. She told you that you must be a permanent sufferer of it, and of course you looked at her like she’d lost her fucking marbles. She went on to explain that French people use the term to describe that moment when you think up the best reply to something literally right after walking away from it. And you know, she was totally right. You do that bullshit _all_ the fucking time.

You’re doing it right now. You’re reflecting back on your conversation with Karkat in the living room and mentally purple-nurpling yourself over how _actually fucking stupid and selfish_ you must have sounded to him the entire time. Here he is, slugging through this lengthy, difficult healing process with fake parents who probably think their baby boy is a basket case because he doesn’t remember them at all from before the age of thirteen or something, a childhood that he never lived through, and up until this point _nobody_ to fucking talk to. His planet is gone. His species no longer exists. Everything he saw as comfortable, including his very own fucking skin, has been ripped away from him and replaced with something unfamiliar and alien. For lack of a better or admittedly more appropriate word.

And there you are, whining about how all of this is ‘just a lot of information to take in’.

You remain on your back, on your bed, eyes moving from the ceiling over to the miniscule amount of light peeking through the crack Jade left at your door until you’re called out for dinner.

 

\- - -

 

You take your sweet fucking time pulling yourself upright and dragging yourself downstairs. Unsurprisingly, you’re the last person to arrive at the table.

And that walk from the kitchen archway to the table is an awkward one. Everybody else in the house is already seated and waiting for you, so when you show up at the entrance, all of their eyes land on you and there you go, you’re in that spotlight. This is the second time today that multiple people have watched you from their seats just as you’re about to walk into a room. They’re probably waiting for you to do something Dave-like, something to set the tone for dinner. Something funny. Familiar. Light-hearted.

But nah. Not right now. Instead you start to vindictively meet eyes with each of them as you move forward and around the table toward the last empty seat, because they can’t tell who you’re looking at through your shades and you wanna see them squirm for putting the pressure on you like this. …except Bro. You try to meet Bro’s eyes. You think you might be close. Fucker plays the same damn game that you do. Bro’s kind of always the guy that kinda winds up excluded from shit and there’s a good reason for it. He does it on purpose. The moment he’s not into something, he’s out.

One by one, they start to look away. Except John and possibly Bro, but remember, he doesn’t count in this game. John’s giving you this really sick, sad attempt at an encouraging smile but mostly he looks like the hinges in his jaw and cheeks aren’t functioning well enough to pull it off. _Mama’s tired_ , that expression says, and you grace him with a small smile of your own as if to say back, _Yeah. Mama sure is tired_.

“’Bout time, David,” Roxy half-slurs from her place at the head of the table, where she always sits. She doesn’t sound as tanked as she usually does, which means you didn’t leave them waiting for TOO long. She’s like a weird clock. You know you’re late to dinner when she’s had enough while waiting for your permanently tardy ass to be rendered about 95% unintelligible and trying to convince Bro that his lap is her seat. That back-and-forth battle for the (half-heartedly unwilling) Strider Throne usually takes about ten or fifteen minutes depending on what’s been sloshing around in her glass, but she never loses. Bro’s-lap-o’clock usually means it’s time to vacate the dinner table and go back to your own shit. 

See? A clock. Tells time like a genius.

Given the state of her only moderate level of intoxication, you can tell that this dinner is going to be a painfully long one.

“Sorry,” you announce to the table flatly as you pull out your chair and drop down into it. You are deciding to be the bigger person, here. You are taking the spotlight bait. “I was all ready like twenty minutes ago but my guy-dle kept giving me these ungainly lumps in all the wrong places. You know how hard those are to fix, am I right ladies?”

“Kid,” Bro cautions you in a low voice.

You heed the warning and wisely cut this joke off before it starts running. Not only is Bro using a potential ass-whoopin' tone on you, but Jade is right next to him giving you a _seriously_ unamused look. The two combined is enough to strike fear into the heart of any man. You know the consequences from experience. Multiple experiences, even.

You haven't directly looked at Karkat yet.

“Alright, listen up,” Roxy starts after taking a very large swallow of her wine and slowly rising to her feet. “There is a guest in my house, and none’a you are gonna make it weird, k? Don’t make it weird.”

You snort, almost instinctively. 

Roxy waggles a frantic uh-uh finger at you. “No no no nonahnahnah, sshh shh-sh-shh, I said don’t make it weird.”

“It’s already weird,” you say back without thinking.

Bro gives you a swift, hard kick to the ankle under the table. He didn’t have to be a fucking brute about it but it does shut you up.

“No insssolenccce!” she barks at you, struggling a little bit through the word and drawing it out clumsily. She’s still not shwastey-pants but she’s a few chugs closer. You find yourself wishing for Bro’s-lap-o’clock like, now, so you can leave. You also find yourself really disturbed that you’re wishing for something like that. “We’re gonna make this kid feel welcome even if I gotta keep you suckers here all _night_.”

There’s a REALLY prime opportunity for a Mean Girls joke right here, but you let it pass with the reminder that Karkat is sitting at this table with you letting his blood pressure rise.

“We are NOT… gonna talk about the thing,” Roxy goes on. “We’re gonna sit here and eat stuff and talk about work, and traffic, and like, I’unno, iPhones or _whatever_ the way normal people do. Capeesh?”

Finally, you give in to the temptation to see how he’s holding up and turn your head a little to glance at him.

He’s just… staring at a spot on the table just ahead of him. He doesn’t look angry or upset or sad or _anything_. He does not look _anything_. His face is carefully vacant like he’s a powered-down robot just trying to physically get through this until he’s allowed to disappear for the rest of the night. You can’t help it, you _really_ fucking feel bad for the guy. No doubt there’s probably a little part of him in there somewhere that’s genuinely thankful for having a place with familiar faces to come to, but you’re also not gonna doubt that he was most likely hoping for things to be a little less morose.

You kinda feel like you HAVE to be saying something.

“Yo, by the way,” you blurt out at Karkat, desperate to paint ANYTHING onto his face because the blankness is giving you the creeps. “an iPhone is a cell phone made by Apple. Apple is a computer company. I think you might know what a computer is. If not, I can remind you.”

His face pulls so naturally into a scowl and what do you know, he looks perfect like that, that’s exactly what you were aiming for. “I know what all of those are, you idiot.”

“Oh yeah, no, not callin’ you stupid or anything. It’s just that. You’re just. You know.”

His eyes narrow. So quick to take offense or get all protective of himself. As always. “Just _what_?”

He’s expecting something insulting. Something along the too-far line, something ignorant about his species change. You know he’s expecting it; he’s making it pretty clear to you, like a dog baring its teeth as a warning to someone threatening it. Everyone else is expecting it, too, by the way they seem to have stopped breathing. You can just hear the muscles in Bro’s leg tensing again, readying himself for another kick.

You glance around the table before leaning forward a little, cupping one side of your mouth, and stage-whispering “ _Midwestern_.”

This beautiful (beautiful?) rainbow of expressions sways across his face, from the initial scowl to innocent realization, finally ending with grouchy indignation. He balls up his napkin and whips it across the table at you with a grumbling, “Shut up, asshole.”

The tension in the room disappears, like fucking magic. So does the invisible vice that you feel like you’ve been trapped in since you came down the stairs.

 

\- - -

 

Expectedly, it’s not too long after the (catered, as is customary for Family Dinners because everyone in this house is lazy and also not a very good chef) food is gone that Roxy announces dinnertime’s end with her Game of Bro-nes routine. So much for making her guest comfortable, right? You all scatter like cockroaches, like usual, except for Karkat who leaves the kitchen after the others only to linger by the entrance to the foyer awkwardly. And lucky you, you’re the one behind him.

You try to be a douchebag and slip by him because even though dinner was relatively ‘okay’, you’re still not totally sure how ‘okay’ you are with one-on-one contact after your last bout of it with him obviously went _so well_. Unfortunately it seems like he put himself in front of you for a reason, because as you try to navigate around him, he says, “Hey.”

And you obviously stop to look at him. As much as you don’t want him to have your undivided attention, he’s been doing it without trying this whole time.

He looks at you with his almost-frown for a second, then asks, “Could we maybe talk?”

Now, you might not remember EVERYTHING from Sburb but you do have a pretty solid memory bank up to a certain point. Sburb Karkat, as you remember him, was abrasive and rude and scathingly insulting and you loved it, it was _hysterical_ even when it was aimed on you – which it was, frequently – to the point where sometimes you goaded the poor asshole on purpose just to get him all flustered and fuzzed up. You’re seeing a few traces of that in him now, very fleetingly, but mostly he just seems so quiet and grudgingly sheepish and withdrawn and _done_ , which you’re not about to blame him for. Your rebooted life was tough. His was way tougher. You might want that old Karkat to come back out in full swing and make everything feel like it’s normal again, but saying so would be really selfish of you.

You are a huge chicken shit and you want to say ‘no’ and just go back up to your room to continue processing all of the life-changing hardballs that have been lobbed at you in the past twenty-four hours. But you’re also a decent person, and you know a muted, unspoken cry for help when you see one. Not that he’d ever fucking admit to it.

Also Jade’s probably at the top of the staircase with a shotgun ready to blast you if you even dare to say no. 

So you say ‘yeah’ and continue on your merry fucking way with him in tow and once you hit the mouth of the hallway that leads to your room, your pulse spikes completely unexpectedly. You’re about to have a Conversation. Capital ‘C’ of utmost importance, there. You know that it’s not his intention to sit there and mumble all shy and shit at each other like you did the day before.

Your bedroom door never looked so intimidating.

You try to be casual as you push into the room and flick on the light. Bro tells you, whenever he graces your little hidey-hole with his esteemed presence, that this is too messy to be a nineteen year olds room but you counter that it’s not _messy_ , it’s _artistically disorganized_. Like you and Picasso decided to party and get shit-faced in your room and this is what you woke up to the next morning.

He doesn’t seem to care. He closes the door behind him and looks around a little but he’s not outwardly disgusted or making faces or anything. He didn’t come all this way from the middle of buttfuck nowheresville to sneer at the state of your damn bedroom, after all.

“Welcome to the man cave,” you say flatly, and you try to be smooth and kick your computer seat out a little further for him to sit on but the wheels catch on the carpet and the whole thing jarringly halts like a car stopping too fast.

You sigh, pick the chair up, and move it the foot and a half away from your desk that you were aiming for in the first place. You glance at him and he’s almost half-smirking at you.

“Shut up and sit down,” you tell him. 

He does. He swivels the chair around and sits in it the wrong way, with his chest against the back of it.

You get fucking dizzy again, what the fuck.

“Are you okay?” he asks because even though he can’t see how tightly shut you’re squeezing your eyes, you can feel that the rest of your face is all weirdly tense. 

You take a deep breath in through your nose. Let it out through your mouth. Open your eyes. He’s looking at you curiously, one eyebrow arched slightly upward.

“I’m good,” you say. “So what’re we talking about?”

His arms drape over the top of the chair’s backrest and he shifts a little like he’s uncomfortable but determined to keep his ass planted where it is because this needs to be done. “Sburb,” he replies, and you feel your stomach sour instantly.

“How about the weather, instead?” You’re being facetious. Also, immature.

His expression flattens. “No,” he says firmly.

“The news? Sportball?”

“Dave.” His tone comes out hard and authoritative, like Bro’s did at dinner.

This is really important to him, isn’t it?

“Fucking fine,” you grumble. “Not my favourite topic but I guess I don’t have a choice, do I.”

“I need to straighten a few things out,” he tells you. “And I’d rather do it NOW so if there are any bombs to drop, they don’t do it on my last fucking day here.”

“I get you. I’m listening. So talk.”

He frowns at you. Maybe that wasn’t the most cordial way to initiate the conversation but just the game’s name alone can switch you from ambivalent to ‘nope’ in less than a second so you’re not about to go into this trying to plaster some fake reaction on your face. 

He’s hesitating. There’s an uncertainty about him all of a sudden. Talking the talk but not walking the walk.

“Now you got nothin’?” you prompt him.

His frown deepens with determination.

“You don’t remember being with me, do you?” he blurts out.

“We hung out all the time, man,” you reply with a shrug. “Of course I remember it.”

“Not like that, dumbass. Not _hanging out_ with me. _Being with_ me.”

It’s not fucking rocket science, what he’s implying. It’s actually something that you’ve been wondering for awhile but tried not to think about too extensively because, really, kind of a mindfuck, having been involved with someone to a serious or even semi-serious extent and not remembering a single fucking second of it.

“So…” You feel nervous. ‘Nervous’ isn’t a good look for a Strider. ‘Nervous’ was designed for people like John, not people like you. ‘Nervous’ catches you off guard and makes you feel vulnerable. ‘Vulnerable’ is an even WORSE look for a Strider. “So you’re confirming, here, that we had a thing.”

What had been determination on his face only minutes ago is now disappointed exhaustion. The way his features seem all weighed down and heavy now is hard to overlook.

“Yeah,” he replies. His voice sounds a lot stronger than the rest of him looks right now. “We had a thing.”

“Was it like. A little thing, or a serious thing?”

“…we never talked about it,” he admits after a small pause. “Not at length, anyway. We had too much other shit to worry about.”

“Did it SEEM serious, then?”

“…to me?” He nods a little. “Yeah.”

Jesus.

You feel pretty damn awful.

“I’m sorry, dude,” you say, knowing that ‘sorry’ doesn’t fix a fucking thing in a situation like this but saying it, anyway. “I honest to god don’t remember anything going that far.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he mumbles. “Not your fault.”

“Game kinda fucked me over in that regard.”

He hums, a soft but stony ‘hm’ as his eyes finally avert to the floor. “You and me both.”

Ooh, yeah, that’s guilt you feel. Regardless of what he says, your fault or not, it roots itself deep into the pit of your stomach and all you want to do is turn tail and hurl yourself out the window just to get out of this room.

You rub at your face with both hands.

“No point in beating yourself up over it,” he says, and now he’s attempting to play the ‘no big deal’ cards even though he SUCKS at that hand and should probably fold it now to avoid dragging the denial out any further. “I kind of knew this was going to be the case, anyway, when Jade told me how severe your memory loss was. If I could change anything, I would have done it by now. But I can’t. So why fucking dwell on it?”

“I ain’t gonna dwell,” you say. “I always had a weird gut feeling that something went down because I DO remember making out with you a couple of times.”

He swallows hard. Nods. Doesn’t say anything.

You can practically hear the walls and floor creaking with the weight of what’s happening right now, and you don’t like seeing him like this. All somber and shit. It really doesn’t suit him. 

So, you instigate. “And you always had your black-crush or whatever on me…“

His eyes flick up; the instigation works beautifully. “Um, no, I didn’t ALWAYS have that, don’t flatter yourself.”

“Please, you could never resist me.”

There’s that indignant frown again, the one that makes him look so much like Karkat that the species change doesn’t even register anymore. “Obviously the game screwed you up,” he bites back. “If it’s filling your vapid head with false memories like that.”

“Says the one who, if I recall correctly, couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into me.”

“Says the one who wound up _begging_ me for it.”

Your train of thought stutters. Girl, _what_?

“…no, no brohammer, I can guarantee you even with amnesia that I didn’t do any begging. Dave Strider does not beg.”

“Dave Strider apparently also ditches his stupid ‘cool’ routine when he’s desperate enough.”

You are putting tiny puzzle pieces together through his choice of words. “…desperate, like, sexy desperate? Wait, really?”

“’Really’ what?”

“So we DID have sex.”

He’s looking at you like you’re the dumbest person he’s actually ever met. “Uh, yeah.”

“ _Seriously_?”

“We ‘re males with hormones, what the fuck else do you think we did? Play Monopoly?”

You will never get used to him knowing what human things are.

“Like… more than once?”

“Stop bullshitting me.”

“I ain’t bullshitting, man, this is serious stuff. This whole time I thought Sburb-me went down as a pansy-ass virgin and you are straight-up blowing my mind right now.”

He’s breathing evenly through his nose like he’s trying to keep a level head and you like it because that means he’s flustered. You’re still a stupid teenager; somehow, this whole thing is really exciting to you. “Yes,” he grinds out through his teeth. “More than once.”

“Hot damn. …was I awesome? I bet I was awesome.”

“You know what?” He rises to his feet. “You’re not taking this seriously in any respect so we’re done here.”

You hold up a hand. “Dude, Karkat, sit the fuck down. I’m just trying to lighten things up, I’m not disregarding your feelings or anything like that.”

He doesn’t sit down, but he’s not making any moves to leave anymore, either. He crosses his arms over his chest and of course you get a little dizzy because that was something he did constantly. “Could have fooled me,” he mutters.

You study him for a second – the guarded expression, the defensive posture, the poorly masked hurt in his voice. “Did you wind up going red for me or something?”

You ask it as gently as you can. 

“I don’t go by those relationship terms anymore,” he says, which is not an answer to your question so you just stare at him until he gets frustrated and snaps, “ _Yes_ , Dave, I went fucking _red_.”

The atmosphere of the room sinks back into tense heaviness.

You debate asking the next question that pops into your head because you have no idea what kind of answer you want to hear. It’s an answer that could really change the way the rest of this visit is going to go for him and while you want to ask it for a reason, you’re also not sure if it’s a good thing for him to be addressing.

In the end, typical you, being curious wins against being considerate.

“Are you still? In, uh. In… red, I mean?”

You could hear a fucking pin drop, it gets so quiet. 

He finally tries to sidestep the question with, “I told you. I don’t go by those terms anymore.”

You sigh and lace your fingers together in your lap. You heard the ‘yes’ in that clear as fucking crystal.

“I’m guessing,” he says slowly. “that you’re not even a little interested, right?”

Honestly you haven’t put much thought into it.

“Haven’t really had a reason to consider it as a possibility until right now,” you reply awkwardly. You’re being put on the spot, here; the guy basically just admitted something emotionally huge (you’re smart enough to know what ‘red’ equates to in human terms) and you’re sitting here not knowing what the fuck to do with it. “I mean… I don’t… I guess I’m still fine with the idea of being with a dude but it’s like…”

You pause. You pause for a little too long and he leans forward a little, impatiently. 

You don’t know how to say ‘I don’t know if I’m attracted to you like that again’ in a way that won’t make you the bad guy, so you decide against voicing that particular thought altogether.

“…Idunno, man,” is what you settle on. “I’m gonna need to think about this.”

He deflates, his arms falling to his sides.

“I don’t even know what I was expecting,” he says.

“Me neither,” you admit. “But at _least_ let me think about it. Maybe we can… Idunno. Maybe we can try to work something out.”

He snorts. “This isn’t a business transaction, Dave.”

“Well, it kinda is. In a weird way. I’m trying to meet you halfway on this one because this is basically starting from scratch for me. You give me some time to figure shit out and see if it will work, and I’ll take it seriously.”

His eyes move from his feet to your face. 

You peer at him over the top rims of your shades. “Okay?”

He’s still hesitating even as he meets your actual eyes for the first time since he got here, but after a few long seconds he nods. “Fine. Okay. I can do that.”

You wonder if maybe you should, like, actually shake hands on it but he ends the discussion by turning around and leaving the room. As the door shuts behind him, you can’t discern if your life just careened into a completely new and previously unexplored direction, or if it’s actually setting itself back on track.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lots of talking and blocky paragraphs in this one. my bad, my bad.
> 
> I'd also like to remind everyone, for the record, that I really don't like the word 'retard' used in an improper and derogatory/offensive fashion, but Dave is sticking to his occasionally ignorant guns, I guess. blame Dave. always blame Dave.
> 
> your comments have been awesome! it's great to still see people visiting my crap every day and I appreciate those of you who take the time to read it. :) thanks, and feel free to come say hi at 'bbbbangarang' on tumblr!
> 
> * * *

Your last girlfriend was a little over a year ago. Her name was Jennifer, and she was actually pretty awesome. Good-looking. Smart. Artistic. Bit more on the reserved side but you’re okay with that. Not exactly one of the ‘popular girls’ but she had a pretty decent amount of friends. Only one of them actually admitted to liking you. The others said you were weird. But ‘weird’ is Teenage Girl for ‘irresistibly charming’, right?

You liked her enough to stick it out with her for more than the typical handful of months. You _wanted_ to stick it out. You weren’t totally convinced that she was The One (because you were eighteen going on twenty-two and that’s just not a thing you were – or are, as of now – capable of computing) but you really did like her. She was one of the only ones you genuinely enjoyed being around.

As you crept closer to graduation, she made the decision that she wanted to _find herself_ and _explore her options_ because she was _starting a new chapter_ in her life and didn’t want to go into college _tied down_. Your heart wasn’t exactly broken, but it did bruise. Your pride, you think, probably bruised a little darker.

Since then you haven’t really cared. You don’t need the company; you have your mansion full of fellow fuck-ups and they’re _your_ fuck-ups and you are just fine with them and nobody else. You don’t need an outlet for flirtation; Jade takes care of that for you – she’s one of those girls who can flirt flawlessly without even realizing it and it’s awesome. You don’t need the sex, not _really_ ; you have porn and a right hand. Or a left, if you’re feeling adventurous. Shit, you have _both_. The opportunities are endless. 

You don’t need a girlfriend (or whatever) to feel like a fulfilled human being.

Fact of the matter is you are probably pretty fucking rusty with dating right now. Especially with a guy. You haven’t dated or really even flirted with a guy other than John in this reset lifetime, and John doesn’t count because you aren’t _actually_ interested in him, you just like to see him squirm. You do it as a harmless joke; obviously there’s no malicious ulterior motive behind it or anything. Bro didn’t raise no homophobe.

But now you’ve just agreed to attempt some semblance of a relationship with another guy and this time it’s not just a joke. This time you mean it. 

You think. 

You’re pretty sure.

The hesitation lies in the fact that circumstances were… largely different in Sburb. You were both sort of forced you to live in the moment because the game was so fucking adept at hurling you into the unexpected without any sort of advance notice. You didn’t know what your futures held, you didn’t know what would happen after the game, or if you’d even wind up surviving it. Sure, you’d been killed in the game before, but there was no way to tell with full certainty that you wouldn’t be fucking obliterated for real-real at any given time. According to Karkat, you had each other, you had the attraction, and you fell into it the way two people would be expected to in that situation. You may not remember that part, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t go down the way he says it did.

You don’t have the die-at-any-moment pendulum swinging over you anymore. Your life is a painfully normal one. You have a routine. It’s surprising how drastically that changes your perception on the whole thing. Just over six years ago you were living dangerously, living _impossibly_ , and you adapted accordingly. You’re doing the same now. You’re adapting to a much slower, less eventful life. A safe life.

You need to seriously think about whether or not you’re making a mistake.

Karkat, as he is right now, is almost like a stranger to you. Not just physically, either, though that’s the biggest thing that’s wigging you out right now. You DO remember finding him intriguingly attractive because he was this alien creature with an alien body and alien mindset and it fucking fascinated you, even though you wouldn’t say it aloud. His skin looked touchable even when you didn’t want to touch it. His teeth and the way they were bared at you when he was angry were strange and exciting. His horns were cute. You liked those stubby little turds, you thought they brought a lot of character to him.

Now, he’s just a kid. This normal looking teenage guy. Generic. Not _bad looking_ , no, but definitely generic. He’s not someone you would point out in a crowd and say ‘yes, him, I will sleep with him immediately’. Honestly he’s not someone you’d even notice in a crowd at all. He’s someone who would pass right by you on the street and you wouldn’t pay a shred of attention to him.

This is going to take some serious trying on your part.

Fortunately – and here is where you’re feeling some optimism – there’s a lot about him that burrows into the deep little vacant recesses of your mind and makes you _almost_ recall something. You’re guessing that’s what the dizziness is; every time you feel it, you can only assume that it’s your brain trying to reboot something important. The way he scowls, the way he rolls his eyes and scoffs, how he crosses his arms over his chest… these all affect you very precisely, but all you can manage to drum up is a vague, ghostly sort of familiarity that someone would get trying to remember something from their early childhood.

Even though there’s no solid clarity, you cling to that shit like some kind of lifeline. You _really_ want to remember stuff, especially now that Karkat’s cleared up a few things. The closest you’re gonna get is what’s familiar to you _right now_ , and THAT is why you’re deciding to give this Thing with him a shot. 

He has five days left until he goes home. You hope you can sort shit out in one way or another in that span of time.

 

-  -  -

 

You find him downstairs in the living room by himself when you give him the verdict. He’s sitting on the couch, the one with its back facing the entryway, holding a notepad and scribbling away on it with a mechanical pencil. 

“Hey,” you say, and he must be pretty deep into what he’s doing because he jumps and you hear the scrape of the pencil going in the _way_ wrong direction on his page. 

He turns and glares at you over the back of the couch.

You’re grinning, despite yourself.

“Sorry,” you offer even though you sort of aren’t, and he sighs all huffy and shit and turns back around to start delicately erasing the accidental skid mark that’s just marred his masterpiece, whatever it is.

“What’re you doing?” you ask as you move forward, getting closer to look at what he’s up to. But before you can see anything other than haphazard pencil smudges that may or may not be part of a cohesive piece of something else, he flips the notepad shut and sets it aside.

“Nothing,” he mutters, swiveling around to look at you again. “What do you want?”

He wants you here, you know for a goddamn fact that he does, but he never was good at matching his words to his wants or needs. His defense mechanism (which also happens to be his default) is to lash out somehow because being ornery is way less risky than being openly emotional in any way whatsoever. His mouth says no but everything else is _obviously_ creaming its pants at the sight of you.

But you aren’t going to buy into any kind of bullshit right now. You came here on a mission, damnit, and you’re gonna get that out of the way before resuming your regularly scheduled antagonizing. 

“Been thinking about stuff,” you tell him.

The frown lines in his forehead smooth out. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Uh.” You pause. Shrug a little. “Yeah. Let’s give it a shot, see what happens.”

He stares up at you, forcibly masking any kind of reaction on his face. It’s working. He’s just a blank fucking slate. “…are you serious, or being an asshole? Because you’re usually an asshole.”

“Not about this, I’m not,” you counter. “I wouldn’t fuck around with something like this.”

He gives you this ‘yeah right’ look. “I’ve experienced you doing it before, and it was during the FIRST year on the meteor so you can’t give me any amnesia bullshit on that.”

He’s right.

You say “Pfff” because you have nothing else to counter with. You really were a phenomenal dickbag back then, point to him on that one.

Then, because you can’t really leave this at ‘pfff’, you tack on, “Anyway, so, yeah. I’m not really sure if you had a game plan or whatever but I’m honestly not too sure how to do this thing. Any thoughts?”

He thinks for a second. “I… not really. I haven’t exactly pursued anyone since you so you’re not asking a very formidable fountain of knowledge.”

You smile crookedly down at him, you can’t help yourself. “You haven’t, huh?”

His eyes tighten a bit at the corners. “No.”

That tone says ‘don’t fucking ask questions’.

“Well, a’right. That’s fine. No pressure, right? We’ll do something easy. In a group, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says – 

– and then he does this thing; he _almost_ smiles, it’s like a tiny little hopeful halfway-upturn on one side of his mouth and it’s definitely not an expression you see a lot, it’d be kind of a weird one if it was on anyone else, but the way he does it and the way it looks on his face makes it look really, really… …really _something_ , you’re not sure, but you’re crossing your fingers that feeling such an unexpected rush, a GOOD one, over one hopeful look on his face is a positive sign – 

– and his voice softens a little. “That sounds good.”

 

-  -  -

 

So you need dating advice.

Yeah, you know what? Shut up.

Not that this is going to be a date. Nobody is actually formally calling it a date. Because technically, it isn’t. Not exactly. ‘Going on a date’ sounds like it may be moving things along way too fast, way too soon. This is more of a ‘group excursion’ because that’s a LOT more comfortable. Karkat _himself_ doesn’t make you uncomfortable, don’t misunderstand. The situation is just a little shaky. You’re meeting up with someone who apparently used to be your boyfriend, who you thought was _dead and gone_ up until only a couple of days ago, and you have agreed to see if rekindling anything after years of not seeing one another, a strong bout of amnesia, and the ultimate fucking granddaddy-180 in physical appearance is even possible.

So maybe you didn’t word that right. It’s not _dating_ advice. It’s just advice in general. Yeah.

Rose is always your go-to for advice, concerning just about anything. John is too goofy and Jade is too emotional; Rose has this rational, level-headed mentality that you respond well to when you’re kind of freaking out and don’t know how to convey it.

You corner her in her room (so neat, so organized, how does anyone live like this, didn't she used to be a hell of a lot messier) and decide to approach the subject carefully with every intention of backing straight the fuck out of it at the first sign of sadness or hostility. You haven’t directly breached anything on apparent troll existence with her yet, and you’re not sure what to expect. 

You try to bring it up as casually as you can to eliminate any possible awkwardness, leaning against her door after she tells you to shut it behind you and saying something like, “So. Karkat. Weird, right?”

She seems incredibly calm; not the brewing storm you’d been imagining. She sits on her bed with her current knitting project set to the side, hands in her lap, perfect picture of serenity, curiously tilting her head a little to one side. “Weird in what sense?”

“You know. …trolls. Being people.”

She smiles, just a small one, and you spend way too much effort trying to pick up the subliminal message behind it. “I wouldn’t call it weird. It’s certainly a surprise, though.”

“Yeah,” you breathe, because out of everyone in this house Rose is the only one you feel like you can really be emotionally honest with and right now, you are motherfucking mentally exhausted. “Surprising.”

Rose shifts on the bed a little. “Dave, I know you want to ask about my thoughts on the whole thing.”

You shrug and say nothing. There’s nothing TO say. You learned a long time ago that if you wanna keep something completely from Rose, just don’t talk to her about it. She may not be a Seer anymore but she’s still _damn_ intuitive.

“I’m fine,” she reassures you. “More than fine.”

“Jade hinted that you were upset.”

She cringes a little; the tendons stick out in her neck for a second. “I _did_ have my few brief moments of selfish disappointment that it wasn’t her showing up at our door, I won’t lie about that. But she’s out there, Dave. Somewhere. And that’s all the validation that I need.”

You drum up a real, honest-to-god smile for her. “Get it, girl.”

“Oh, I plan to,” she replies in a tone that suggests she’s already started trying. You'd ask for more deets on that situation but it's clear that she wants to move on from it for now because she changes the subject. “Is that all you needed to talk about?” 

“Ah. …well.” You drum your fingers on your thighs. “…I was wondering if you’d help me out with something. I’m sort of flying blind right now. Uh. To set up a sort of…” 

Don’t say ‘date’, numbnuts.

“…get-together. With… all of us.”

She quirks an eyebrow, very subtly. “Karkat included, I’m assuming.”

“Well, yeah. No reason to exclude him.” Because that would make this whole thing pointless.

Rose does this thing where she stares at you like she’s trying to figure out a really complicated math problem when she’s assessing whether or not there are little hidden agendas behind what you say or do.

“No,” she finally says. “I suppose there isn’t.”

 

-  -  -

 

You and Rose had originally decided on a movie night, but when she gathered everyone into the living room with a laptop to go over what’s playing for the evening, nobody could agree on a decision. Everything was either action or chick flick, not a whole lot of variety to choose from. You and John nixed chick flick like, instantly (Karkat put his vote in on that one; big surprise there, good to see THAT hasn’t changed) and Rose said absolutely not to nonsensical violence and inappropriate amounts of gore. She and John started arguing, you stuck to John’s side, and eventually Jade got sick and tired of everyone’s horseshit and up-ended all of the cushions on one couch into the middle of the floor and demanded that you all just stay the fuck home and watch a movie here.

When the ex-Dr. Manhattan of your group suggests something, none of you are really inclined to turn her down – especially when her idea happens to be the most logical one.

So that’s what you do. You tear the couches apart, make a giant fucking puddle of cushions in front of Roxy's nice big TV, and let Rose and John take the lead with agreeing on a movie from the selection that Roxy and Bro have been steadily building up over the years. Karkat wants nothing to do with the process, probably because his vote was vetoed so quickly during the first debate, so he digs out a little space for him to sit and stays there quietly observing everything. You are still a little put off by the decrease in volume on his part, but you can’t blame him, either. This whole shebang is probably still REALLY fucking overwhelming for him. He needs to find his place around you all again.

You and Jade escape to the kitchen to whip up some ghetto homemade nachos and popcorn. The whole time, she’s just kinda grinning at you and when you ask ‘What?’ she just shrugs and pretends to redirect all of her attention onto the food. 

Nobody’s used the word ‘date’ yet, which you’re thankful for. You can tell they’re thinking it. Because you are, too.

The movie’s been chosen (Inception, since all of you seem personally and understandably attached to it for the dream sequence shit – also Cillian Murphy, hubba hubba), the food’s brought out, and you forgot to bring the sodas along so you go back into the kitchen to get them. When you come back with the case, the space to Karkat’s right has been left suspiciously vacant for you.

Nobody really pays much attention to the film for awhile. There’s a lot of eating and talking and asking Karkat curious (but also harmless and non-intrusive) questions about his life these days, and every time he answers and you turn to look at him, you remember how close these buttheads made you sit to him and since you’re getting a good view of his face, now, you gotta admit that… maybe he IS pretty attractive. Basic features, sure, and nothing distinguishing like freckles or moles or anything like that, but his face is _set up_ nicely. He has great cheekbones and a sleek, streamlined jaw and a nicely sloped nose. His skin is darker than yours, this really rich tan colour, and it compliments his eyes REALLY well, makes 'em pop since they're lighter.

…okay, yeah, he’s a good looking dude. Forget all the 'generic' bullshit you spewed about earlier. At least you got that part figured out.

You learn that when he first woke up and fully figured shit out, he had a serious panic attack. Like, _serious_ serious; he needed to be hospitalized for a few days, it was so bad. The shock was waaay too much for him to handle in one giant blow like that. He recalls, with an air of slight embarrassment, that he lashed out on his new parents the first time he saw them. First he insulted them. When they yelled at him for being a terrible child for no reason, he insulted them harder and louder. When they tried to punish him, he tried to bare his fangs and claws at them and they weren’t there. They were replaced with stubby, rounded teeth and short, stumpy fingernails. He was completely powerless, and that’s when he realized what was going on. That’s when he went a little coo-coo. 

Karkat’s a smart guy, always has been, so his time in the hospital gave him a chance to put all of the pieces together and digest everything – maybe not entirely, but enough for him to be able to face the parents without losing his fucking mind all over again.

Understandably he went through his ‘rebellious years’ a little early. He didn’t really want anything to do with these people he’d been forced to co-exist with but he faked it, and he faked it HARD. Between the ages of twelve (apparently he’s a little younger than you in human years? You don’t know why but you’re amused by the prospect) and eighteen, he put up with the therapy – which he legit needed after awhile, and he says wound up helping him out – and the parents until he was able to move out.

He doesn’t go into the nasty details of his recovery from the reset, but you can tell while you’re listening that it fucked him up, and it fucked him up _bad_.

“So your parents,” John speaks up tentatively. “they’re… are they even actual people?”

“Technically, yeah, I guess,” Karkat replies. “But I always thought it was weird that they never had any pictures in the house, though. No wedding photos, no photos of their pasts, nothing depicting me as a child… nothing. Just… fucking stupid, ugly art.”

“Almost like they didn’t exist at all until after the reset,” John says. “Like the game invented them for you to give you a life or something?”

Karkat nods. “That’s what I thought, too.”

“Strange,” Rose chips in. “to think about how apperceptive and self-aware Sburb actually was.”

“Real fuckin’ spooky,” you speak up. “I-Robot meets God or something, right there.”

“From what I’ve gathered speaking to Sollux and Fef,” Karkat says. “It’s like that across the board. Those two got the same thing.” 

Your gaze shifts to Rose. She still seems fine, just a little distracted. She’s looking at the floor and not at Karkat, but she’s nodding slightly like she listening along.

“You all kept your first names?” Jade finally joins in.

Karkat snorts.  “Yeah. The three of us did, at least. Don’t know why we kept the first ones and not the last ones. At least everyone making up ridiculous nicknames for me in Sburb trained me for what middle school humans would be like. The younger members of your… _this_ species have some seriously fucking disturbing behavioural customs when it comes to socializing.”

“Those ain’t customs, my man,” you inform him. “Pre-teens are just fucking retards.”

He sniffs with disgust. “It didn’t convince me that I wanted to be a permanent part of this culture, that’s for damn sure.”

This, coming from someone who initially grew up in a highly aggressive alien society.

“I don’t blame you,” you reply glumly.

“What’s your last name now?” Jade asks, and Karkat shakes his head.

“Nope,” the stubborn mule responds. “That one, I’m not telling you.”

Nobody decides to push him. Yet.

Instead, everyone kind of falls back into gradually watching the movie, which is by this point more than halfway over. It’s a nice, mellow lull. John starts picking at the last crumbs of nacho chips, Jade falls asleep on Rose’s shoulder, and after Karkat’s gone up to use the restroom, he sits back down in a way that makes his thigh touch yours and you think about moving, but you don’t. You stay put, and eventually the pressure becomes as natural and unnoticeable as the clothes on your skin.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello and sorry for the bout of silence! I got married on May 1st and had a honeymoon directly afterward - no time for writing there, folks.   
> but here you go, I'm getting back in the swing. :)
> 
> * * *

There’s this comment that John made to you that night, the movie night, when people pulled themselves out of the cushion nest on the floor to head upstairs. He stayed pretty quiet during the last half of the movie and you only noticed it because EVERYONE got quiet. You thought initially that maybe filling the room with useless talking might help to alleviate any tension but once everyone sort of fell into themselves and the only background noise you had left was the movie itself, you chickened out and joined the silent herd.

Rose can keep to herself pretty well, so that didn’t surprise you much. Jade was snoring so you knew she wasn’t going to be any help. Karkat, with the exception of his impromptu word-barf backstory, has been relatively quiet since he arrived and, yeah, you guess that makes sense. But John? John’s mouth runs faster than you do. Five hundred miles an hour, that fucking mouth, especially when he’s excited and socializing with everyone. That was the _perfect_ opportunity to drill his marathon of stupid stories and jokes into ears that haven’t heard any of it yet, but unpredictably he blew the chance off and did nothing but crunch on his nacho remains and stare pointedly at the TV.

He’s supposed to be your wingman, so you were a little annoyed. Especially considering you had a warm leg touching your own and your body was feeling _all_ sorts of confused over it; you could have used that distraction.

Karkat excused himself the minute the credits kicked in, which _also_ annoyed you because this whole fucking thing was designed around a tentative dating experiment and the last thing you’d been expecting was for him to abandon ship RIGHT when the two of you could have been weaned into having less and less company until you were alone. Even Jade, who was still just waking up, turned her eyes from the visible spot where he disappeared at the top of the staircase to look at you.

Your friends get you at this point, so you were glad that Rose and Jade decided to leave you to your own devices without embarrassing you by fucking saying anything. But John, he hung around for a minute. He stood up and stretched, made it a nice long one, a good cover for the fact that he was just waiting for the girls to wander out of earshot.

“Sorry, man,” he said to you when they were, and you shrugged because you don’t like or want ‘sorry’s. Being pitied is way worse than feeling disappointed, in your opinion.

“It was his idea, anyway,” you replied, which was a lie but you didn’t give a fuck.

“Yeah. Well.” John lingered awkwardly for a second or two longer, before adding on, “I have no idea how you’re coping with this so well.” 

Then, he left.

You have been thinking about that comment ever since.

Because you don’t have any fucking idea, either.

Honestly, this isn’t how you were picturing things. The scenario of finding the trolls had played out in your head on more than one occasion, obviously, and you’d always imagined it as this deeply emotional, hug-and-cry-it-out sort of spectacle that could EASILY rival any of Karkat’s old mushy rom-coms. You’d imagined a lot of meaningful talks, lots of struggling to hold back tears, lots of reflecting back on whatever anyone could remember about Sburb. A healing process. Therapy. Catharsis.

This isn’t like that at all.

Everything has been stiff and strange. No meaningful talks, no deep emotions, no reminiscence… just a lot of standing around staring at each other because you apparently have no fucking clue how to process ANY of this like a normal, decent person. You’ve felt shock, definitely. A lot of it. Who wouldn’t be shocked in a situation like this one? That lasted for the first day, but now you’re settling into this weird little pocket of nonchalant numbness. You’re not freaked out by it. You’re actually freaked out by the fact that you’re not freaked out by it.

Instead of hugging it out, you’re talking to him like you just saw him down the street yesterday. Instead of feeling way more than you think you can handle, you’re kind of just emotionally shrugging a lot. You feel like you’re approaching this WAY too casually, WAY too flippantly while he looks _fucking horrified_ every single time he interacts with you.

John used an interesting word. ‘Cope’. That, you think, is where you’re falling short. You SHOULD be coping; technically in a sense you sort of are, but where does the line between ‘coping’ and ‘just dealing with it’ lie, anyway? 

Maybe you’re being paranoid.

Or maybe this just isn’t meant to work.

There are unfortunately only four days left to figure it out.

 

\- - -

 

First things first, you gotta know why the fuck Karkat would agree to the group date experiment and then run off like a coward as soon as he got the best opportunity. The little fucker has always been rude, but you feel PERSONALLY slighted by that stunt and you’re not very good at keeping your intense displeasure in people to yourself.

You figure you’ll make shit worse if you barge into the guest room uninvited (you used to do that on the meteor, that’s something you can remember, but neither of you were struggling through this level of PTSD back then so it’s safe to say that using a more palatable approach right now would be pretty smart) so you opt to ditch the straight-forward and intrusive route in favour of the sneaky and slightly passive-aggressive one instead. He stays shut up a lot of the time, you’ve noticed, but there is ALWAYS a way to catch someone off-guard.

Straight-forward and intrusive is much more your style, sure, but the look on his face when he comes back from using the bathroom down the hall and finding you all sprawled out on his bed like you own the joint is pretty fucking priceless, you have _no regrets_.

When he sobers up, which takes only a few beats and a mock salute from you, he’s pretty pissed. If you’re remembering correctly, he really hates having his private, safe spaces barged in on without permission, even when the spaces don’t belong to him to begin with.

“I see some things haven’t fucking changed,” he snaps at you.

“Sure they have, buddy,” you respond. “I waited until you _weren’t_ in the room to make myself at home.”

“My mistake.” He reaches behind him, grips the doorknob and opens the door wider. He is unnecessarily mad at you, which you think might be a defense mechanism that nothing, not even a fucking jump in time and space, could change. So angry, so defensive, _zero reason_. “Now leave.”

You couldn’t doubt that this is Karkat for even a second. God.

You swing your legs over the edge of the bed and sit up. “I need to talk to you first.”

“About what?” 

You don’t say or do anything in response, which drags this long, dramatic sigh out of him and gets him to swing the door the other way and shut it.

You pat the spot next to you and he shuffles forward to sit, but he’s moving and looking at you like he suspects you’ve got a bomb stashed in your undies or something.

“So, that whole thing last night,” you say. “That was alright, yeah?”

He is no longer looking at you. He’s started jiggling one of his legs. You can feel the vibrations of the movement through the mattress. That is always something you see as a nervous habit, and you can’t help but wonder why calling last night ‘alright’ is making him nervous.

“It was fine,” he says, clipped.

‘Fine’ is not a word any dude wants to hear in relation to dating, like, ever. ‘Alright’ sucks too, but in a more neutral sort of way. ‘Alright’ is leagues fucking better than ‘fine’. ‘Fine’ is the polite, diet version of ‘Jesus, it was awful’.

“It was…” he adds, then pauses. You’re getting all excited to hear what sort of colourful revision he has in place of the word ‘fine’ until he finishes with, “…yeah, it was fine.”

Okay, you get that you’re no motherfucking Casanova, but really?

“Please, Karkat, calm down,” you drawl, unamused. “Restrain yourself. Put your clothes back on, I respect you too much for this.”

He lifts his eyes to glare at you, because you’re _obviously_ in the wrong, here…?

“You’re misunderstanding me,” he tells you.

“Then maybe you should explain what two ‘fine’s in one description entail, and also why the hell you disappeared after the movie ended.”

His glare softens (you get a little dizzy again; that always happened to his expressions when you had him in a corner and he knew it, like a dog rolling over on its back in surrender and exposing its mid-line when it knows it’s done something wrong) and he’s looking away from you again. 

You press, “If we’re gonna try to do this, man, you kinda need to communicate with me a little. I can’t read your mind.”

“Stop patronizing me,” he mutters. “I’m thinking of a way to word this.”

Word what?

That doesn’t really bode well, does it?

“I would have preferred,” he finally says, slowly. “For it to be just us.”

Oh. 

Well.

That’s pretty to-the-point.

“We agreed on it being a group thing,” you say, because you’re instantly defensive and feeling like he’s telling you this because he didn’t even want it to begin with.

“I know,” he says. “And it was a good idea until I realized that I couldn’t really talk about anything.”

“Dude, you did an assload of talking. Everyone wanted to hear all about Neo-Karkat’s big adventure.”

“Not THAT sort of talking, stupid,” he hisses. 

You’re not THAT stupid, you guess, because something clicks and you suck in a breath and the noise draws his attention back to you.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, _oh_. I guess maybe I was expecting us to be able to talk through shit since we haven’t been in that sort of situation for a long time.”

Long time, he says. If that understatement wasn’t so terrible, it might actually be funny.

“ _I_ only suggested it.” You’re still a little bit defensive. “And _you_ agreed. If you didn’t wanna go that route, you should’ve said something before we even bothered.”

“Are you not listening to me? I just _said_ —“

“I’m listening, man, I heard you the first time. Just don’t get all huffy at me for no damn reason, all I did was have an idea. Can’t get much more innocent than that.”

He rolls his eyes a little. “I’m not attacking you or anything.”

You snort, maybe a bit more derisively than you mean to. “Think back on literally everything that you said to me just now and tell me that I’m misinterpreting all of it.”

He hesitates and takes the advice and _actually_ thinks about it. He realizes he’s wrong. You know he does. It’s all the fuck over his face. And you also know that he’s not planning on outwardly admitting that the point goes to you.

“Anyways,” he says, and you’re reminded of John and you’re hit with a sudden urge to slap someone.

“ _Anyways_ ,” you cut him off like a douche, because now you’re getting a little irritated again and you feel like you’re not being given a decent enough amount of talking time, here. “For real, what are you trying to get at? Because last night I got the feeling that you’re not as into trying this thing out as you thought, but now you’re telling me that you’re all aloof and shit because you didn’t want it to be _everyone_ , you just wanted it to be us. Which, I’m gonna throw in there, doesn’t make any fucking sense at all because we COULD have been alone to talk if you just held on a goddamn second instead of fleeing the scene. Everyone was ready for bed, bro. We could have hung back if we wanted to.”

He’s quiet and broody and a little guilty for a few minutes and you just let it happen. You _bask_ in it, because you like being The One Who’s Right just as much as he does and when you best him at something, it’s a glorious feeling.

“You don’t seem as serious about this as I was hoping,” he finally says, quietly.

You deflate. You need to keep reminding yourself that you are now dealing with another human being, not an alien from a much more aggressive and less emotionally-inclined upbringing.

“I wouldn’t agree to it if I wasn’t serious about it,” you reply and hey, look at that, your voice has gotten all quiet too, weird.

“I have my reservations,” he says. “You’re just so… fucking calm about everything, like you could really give three shits about integrating anything from Sburb back into your life.” You open your mouth to defend yourself again because THAT comment was a bit too presumptuous for even you to stomach quietly, but he keeps going before you can say anything. “I’m pretty sure that’s not the case, but that’s the attitude you’re giving off. You always use to be like that. I was used to it back then. I’m not used to it, now.” He smirks suddenly, but it’s a pretty wry kind of expression. “It pissed me off back then. It pisses me off even more, now.”

“So, basically, me being me is pissing you off.”

“Of course it is,” he says casually. “But it’s the same as before. I can brush it off because—“

He stops. He stares at you. He’s weighing the pros and cons of what he’s about to say. Old Karkat would have just let his damn tongue fly willy-nilly without a fucking care in the world. Yet another piece of evidence that the Sburb reset fucked him up a little.

“Because you like me, yeah?” You don’t know why you throw that out there, but your intuition is itchy.

He huffs a humourless breath out through his nose. “Stupid, right?”

“Not really,” you tell him honestly. “Not _stupid_. Kinda weird, though. Like… how do you even know for sure that you still actually like me, you know? It’s been years and a lot of shit has happened between then and now, especially for you. Plus the whole memory loss thing.”

“See, that only applies to you,” he says. “My memories are all fine. I remember liking you, I remember _how much_ I liked you. I guess even though it’s been a few years, since I didn’t lose any of that, none of it faded away. It just… sort of stayed where it was.”

This is when he finally stops looking at you. You’re surprised he held eye contact for as long as he even did.

“Same can’t be said for you, though. And I know that. I’m not expecting you to still like me as much as you seemed to in Sburb. I kind of mentally prepared myself for that before I came here.”

This is a horrendously awkward conversation. You two sound like a couple of fucking fourteen year olds with the whole ‘I like you do you like me’ thing. As adolescent as the discussion might be, though, you do have to admit that it’s something worth thinking over. He still likes you, that’s been admitted to and confirmed, but you just know that the question of whether the feelings are reciprocated is just floating around the tip of his tongue waiting to be asked, but he’s afraid that he already knows the answer so he’s too intimidated to spit it out.

Not to get you wrong or anything – dude’s good-looking and he still has the attitude that you remember being attracted to in the first place, all spit-firey and sassy and stubborn, and what the hell, you’re only human, you aren’t about to argue if someone wants to crawl all up on you and explore your naughty-bits, you’d be a damn fool to turn down an opportunity like that.

It’s what comes _afterward_ that has you hesitating the way you are. The connection, you know? The mushygushy feelings stuff. You can’t recall if you got any better at that kind of thing back during Sburb, but you’re sure as hell not convinced that you _presently_ have the maturity level to handle anything serious. Probably you’ll just offend the crap out of him, sometimes on purpose but also sometimes totally by accident, over and over until he’s fed up with you and kicks you to the curb. You aren’t exactly chomping at the fucking bit to put yourself in a situation like that.

But then again… Jesus, really, _look_ at him. He’s got You’re Fucking Annoying Me written all over him and he’s STILL willing to plunk his ass down next to you to hash some shit out, and he’s STILL willing to open up a little and show you some guts, even though it’s probably embarrassing him. You gotta give the guy credit; he’s making a way bigger effort than you are, regardless of the lopsided levels of emotions.

See? You get it. You can totally do this. 

“Look,” you exhale. “Okay. Fine. I’m gonna admit, the thought of leaping back into something with you hasn’t seemed completely realistic to me because I wasn’t exactly looking for anything in the first place, before you got here. That’s not on _you_ , dude, you just literally caught me at a point where I feel sort of ‘eh’ about relationships.”

“So we’re calling this off, then,” he surmises, not bothering to hide the disappointment in his tone.

“Nah, that’s not what I’m saying,” you say back. “not at all. I’m just telling you where I’ve been coming from so far. I didn’t really realize that you were _this_ gung-ho about next-level shit, so. Yeah. Why don’t we just bite the bullet and do something, just the two of us?”

His eyebrows shoot straight up so fucking fast, it’s almost comical. “…are you serious?”

“Yeah, man, fuck it. Obviously this slow-going thing is shooting off all kinds of mixed signals, so why don’t we just go all fucking in?”

“…you _are_ serious.”

“As a stroke, bro. Let’s just do it. Whatever, right? You only have a few days left and we’re not gonna figure squat out if we’re sitting around on our hands every day waiting for something to change. May as well throw all of our chips in now, instead of holding onto them until it’s too late to even use them.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. “W- I mean, yeah, I… what would we even _do_?”

You shrug. “Get the hell out of the house, for starters. I’ll think of something. I’ll borrow some cash from Bro and we’ll take a cab around the city, maybe. Stop at a few places, show you around a little.”

He is awfully into blankly and silently staring at you these days.

“ _Seriously_ ,” you press, figuring the only reason he isn’t happily squealing up a storm right now is because he just doesn’t fucking believe you. “Chill out. I’ll figure it out and it’ll be fun, regardless whether we end the night sucking face or not.”

Aaannd why exactly did you say that?

His nostrils flare. Your face feels warm. 

“Anywayyeah, leave it to me, okay?” You stand quickly, clap him maybe a little too hard on the shoulder and head directly for the door. “I’m not working tomorrow so be ready to get out of here by four. Is four okay? Yeah, four’s good.”

“Four’s good,” he echoes you from his spot on the bed, distantly and unsteadily.

“Yeah, four is… awesome. Four’s the best.” You pause. Stupid, off-handed and purposely uncomfortable comments like that come to you so frequently and you use them on your friends _constantly_ but this is the first time in a long time that one of them has caused an actual physically flustered reaction in you. And you aren’t exactly used to being flustered. You’re trying to think up a smooth exit and keep coming up with absolutely diddlies, so you just mock-salute him again and escape the room before it gets any warmer around your collar.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay look this story is gonna be longer than the three preceding it and longer stories need some sort of middle ground of happiness, right?
> 
> * * *

You’re doing this.

You’re gonna do it.

This is a thing that is going to happen.

It’s going down. You’re yelling timber. 

(Metaphorically, not literally, that would be weird.)

You’re just waiting for it to kick in and hit you.

You’re standing in front of the mirror in your room and staring hard at what you chose to wear today like you’re going to the goddamn prom, and you’re waiting for it to kick in and hit you. Come on, any time now, let’s go.

The word ‘date’ was being very loosely used before, but it’s the only word at the forefront of your mind, now. This can’t be hidden behind fancy excuses like ‘group get-together’ or ‘movie night with friends’. Maybe that WAS a date, kinda, but it was easier to not think of it as one because you had all these people in the way to keep you distracted.

You have nothing to distract you, now. There is no group to hide behind. It’s you, it’s him, and it’s a fucking date. A real, full-fledged date.

You haven’t been on a legit date in a really long time.

The last time you went on a date was back when you first started seeing Jennifer. You’d like to think that you’re pretty good with wooing people to a certain extent – you clean up relatively well when you feel like it and contrary to the belief of your _wonderful_ friends, you actually CAN put a lot of your inappropriateness away for the sake of impressing someone. Not all of it, though. If someone’s gonna date you, they’re gonna have to suck it up and deal with your personality, even if they don’t particularly like it. You consider it a screening process – be appropriate, be respectful, but let some of those jokes and some of your sense of humour into the first impression as a test. If they hate it, fuck ‘em. If they like it. Well. _Fuck_ ‘em, right? Heh.

Now, you’re going into it with someone who knows how you roll. Your personality hasn’t changed since the reset; it’s not like you were born again with a clean slate and had to relearn how to Person all over again. You’re still the same you regardless of time-and-space mindfuckery, and here’s a guy who can stand you, even when he _can’t_ fucking stand you. You couldn’t ask for a better set-up than that.

That’s why you’re trying not to take the pessimistic route with this whole thing. Sure, as of right now the idea of fondling another guy’s bait and tackle doesn’t do too much for you, but you are sure as shit getting bodily reactions out of imagining kissing that fucking grumpy face of his right off (naturally implanted by your own damn self the night before with the well-placed but ill-timed suggestive comment) and _that_ is a good fucking sign in your book.

Jeans and a teeshirt are probably fine, right? You’re taking busses and cabs around town, not hitting up a Michelin star restaurant. There won’t be much wining and dining. Cruising and schmoozing, maybe. Cruising and boozing if you get _really_ damn lucky.

You start messing with your hair like a dweeb, and that’s around when it _does_ start to hit you.

You’re going on a date. With _Karkat_.

Humanized Karkat, okay, but Karkat nonetheless. 

You HAVE to admire his dedication in getting what he fucking wants. You are being courted by this motherfucker for the second time in your very strange and very backwards existence. The first time he apparently had you in his grip was severed by completely unexplainable circumstances that separated you for _years_ , and after all of the healing and therapy and hurt and confusion, he fucking _tracked you down_ to do the whole thing all over again.

That’s pretty monumental, you can’t lie.

Pretty motherfucking monumental.

You take a deep breath and stop fucking around with your hair. You stare at your reflection and repeat in your head, _this is a date, we’re going on a date_ because the more you think about that one stupid word, the more you roll it around in your head and really solidify it in your mind, the more _real_ it’s starting to sound.

 

\- - -

 

Karkat is also wearing jeans and a teeshirt.

You are a genius.

By the time you roll out and head downstairs, he’s actually lingering in the foyer and waiting for you. It’s endearing so you smile crookedly at him at you reach the bottom step, and he glowers and flips you off. It’s good to know that your totally silent conversations are still in good standing.

Bro had been a little hesitant to dish out some cash, at first. He has a damn decent amount of money but he’s pretty stingy and he doesn’t give it up freely. He’s gonna be one of those like, 80-year-old self-made millionaires just because he sits on it and doesn’t let it fucking go anywhere. His car is about fifteen thousand years old and is due to be put out to pasture literally any day now, but he holds onto it because he fucking _refuses_ to ‘waste’ any of his savings on something unnecessarily luxurious. In a few years you’ll probably be calling him phenomenally wise. For now, in the blissful throes of ignorant youth, you think he’s a stupid asshole.

Once you explained that the cash borrow-age was for a date, though, that shit was in your pocket _real_ fast. Bro may be stingy but he’s always looked out for your well-being. Well-being includes romantic happiness, you guess. Or the quest to get laid. Either way, one or the other or both, he deemed it important enough to shove more than a few twenties at you and remind you to pluck your eyebrows and wax your legs.

Gotta hand it to him – when he’s generous, he’s _generous_. He also understands how fucking money-hungry New York cabs can be. That, too.

You called ahead like a good gentlemanly suitor and you’re both outside the literal second the cab shows up. The ride itself is a little awkward – mostly quiet, save for Karkat’s occasional question or two about Rose’s neighborhood. You get the feeling that the fake little family he got wedged into isn’t exactly well-off, because not only was he eyeing the mansion like a jealous hobo when you pulled away, but his questions mainly have to do with the housing in the area and how much you think these places cost.

You are the _worst_ person to be living in a big fucking house like that, because you’ll brag endlessly about where you live to get on peoples’ nerves from time to time but the second anyone asks you about shit like property costs or square footage or whatever, you are like, literally the least concerned or knowledgeable. How in the hell do you know, and why in the hell would you care? You doubt even Roxy’s paid a single ounce of attention to shit like that, either, and it’s _her_ damn house.

Your first stop is the movie theatre, which he stares at with no small amount of exasperation when he climbs out of the cab. You pay and tip and slide out after him, and he shifts his eyes incredulously in your direction.

“Another movie?” he asks you, whiny bitch that he insists on being. “Seriously?”

Your reasoning is this: if you go to a movie first, you’ll have something to talk about during the rest of the cab or bus rides that you’ll be taking all over the goddamn place for the rest of the day instead of sitting in silence and staring out of your respective windows. The other alternative would be to incessantly talk his ears off about basically everything and anything that comes to mind, but the movie idea seems a little more fitting for a date considering you actually _don’t_ really want to annoy him to the point of throwing you out of a moving vehicle. You can choose to annoy him on _any other day_ , that freedom is totally and undeniably yours, but today is when you kind of WANT to mind your P’s and Q’s.

But only a little.

Instead of explaining all of this to him, you roll your eyes and gently nudge him forward a little. “Shut up and get in there.”

Maybe he really is irritated with the idea of having to sit in a movie theatre with you for the next couple of hours, but if that’s the case, he doesn’t show it. Instead, he tenses his jaw and does as he’s told, even though everything in his expression and his posture are very loudly protesting.

You should have brought Grumpy Dude Treats with you or something because he totally deserves one right now.

The only interesting thing playing today is one of those Bad Boys sort of buddy-cop movies, and even though Karkat CLEARLY isn’t the least bit interested (as can be shown by his increasing level of grouchiness), he goes along with it, anyway. Tries to buy his own ticket too, the dumbass; you shoulder your way in front of him and ask for two. 

He thanks you after glaring fucking fire-smothered daggers in your direction, and he does it quietly and grudgingly. Not used to having people pony up cash for him, apparently. 

That, or he’s not used to being calculatedly and chivalrously wooed.

Ain’t that a goddamn shame.

Once you’re seated, all the way in the back since Karkat already seems antsy about this idea to begin with, you decide to try and lighten up the mood a little. As cute and entertaining as he actually can be when he’s all aggravated and flustered, that sort of shit can totally kill the vibe of a date. The last thing you want is for him to abandon ship, delicate little flower that he is – every precaution needs to be on hand and ready to use at all times. 

You may require potential partners to accept your sparkling personality for what it is, but sometimes you gotta tone it down a little, you know? Like you said before, you can tuck the inappropriateness away when it’s important.

Not that you really need to impress this asshole at this point, but you guess this does count as important, regardless.

You utilize some of the usual charm points very precisely, careful not to go overboard. People would be fucking floored by your amount of control when you _actually_ make the effort. You toss popcorn into the air and try to catch it in your mouth. You fail at every shot except one. You crack comments about the ads sliding across the screen. You groove in your seat to the music playing over the theatre’s speaker system, and you dramatically mouth along when the song changes to Respect by Aretha Franklin. THAT one finally gets a smirk out of him – he’s still looking around all furtively like he’s embarrassed to be sitting next to much less _associated_ with you, but he’s not scowling anymore and hell, that’s enough for you.

He starts visibly relaxing just as the previews kick in. Mission fucking accomplished.

He may not have wanted to see this movie but _goddamn_ was it a good choice. His vague disinterest and inability/refusal to actually get invested leaves everything wide open to commentary throughout the entire thing. As the movie rattles on – most of it, cheesy one-liners and racial shenanigans, but some of it admittedly pretty impressive action sequences – you can tell that Karkat is feeling less strained because he’s taking advantage of the fact that nobody’s sitting anywhere in close proximity to you by snipping things here and there at the movie, not looking at you but intending for you to hear every word. You do, and you laugh, because the guy is pretty damn funny when his irritation is settled solely on something that isn’t _you_ for a change. You laugh and he distracts himself by drinking his Sprite or dumping some M &M’s into his palm but he can’t fucking hide how much he wants to grin back at you, no matter how hard he tries to smother it down.

You suddenly realize, during one of his cryptic and sarcastic hiss-whispers toward the screen, how comfortable it is, how comfortable _you_ are, and there’s a stirring in your stomach that you can’t properly place but you like it and like hell you’re going to let it stop this early into everything.

It’s occurring to you that you’re pulling an unexpected 180 as far as your willingness is concerned. YOU were the one who had reservations about getting back into this with Karkat in the first place since you don’t remember _getting into it_ with him from Sburb at all. Now, you’re making a pretty obvious effort to ensure that his mood stays up and his attention stays at least 80% on you. 

You know this feeling. You’ve felt it with past girlfriends, before they officially became girlfriends.

He turns to you with the ghost of a smirk still lingering at the corner of his mouth. You can almost imagine the little peek of fang there, just below his slightly curled upper lip. Even without it, you’re struck by how familiar it is and shit, yeah, this is what was missing, this HAS to be what was missing.

You thought you weren’t gonna be into this. Turns out you just needed a little time to adjust to him again. You just needed to see him loosen up, shake himself out of his post-Sburb slump, and get back into the way it was between you before everything vanished into question marks and fog.

Fuck.

The smirk fades and a crease forms between his dark eyebrows and he asks, “What?” like you’re offending him by no longer laughing at his jokes, you giant doucheball.

 _Fuck_.

You shove a big stupid fucking grin onto your face even though your pulse is spiking and it’s sort of catching you off-guard. You say, “Just zoned out, but you’re more entertaining than the movie at this point.” and you expect him to fall back into the weird brooding thing that he does when his buzz is brutally slain.

But he surprises you – his expression softens back down and he whispers, “Alright.” Then he pauses before reaching across you to steal some of your popcorn, staring challengingly at you the entire time like he just declared war on the entire country of Strider and his army is like five billion times bigger and stronger than yours and he’s probably right since all of your defensive walls are collapsing like they’re made of fucking popsicle sticks anyway.

You are going to date the SHIT out of this motherfucker.

He crams the popcorn into his mouth and goes in for another round, but you grab his wrist and shove his hand aaaalll the way down into the gooey, over-buttered bag, straight to where all the _gunky stuff_ is settling. He goes to squawk at you but he chokes on the noise _just_ as it’s about to come out and the aftermath is this sound that you’re pretty sure neither of you have ever heard another human being make before, and his retaliation is to rip his hand from your grasp and smear it across your face.

You’re pretty sure one of his fingers almost goes up your nose and all you can feel is just slippery buttery horror spreading over the entirety of your mouth and you feel like this sort of thing SHOULD make you mad but you can’t be mad, it’s just… too good. Leave it to Karkat to match you step-by-step. Even though some of the people way down in the further front rows turn a little to glare back at you for getting a little rowdy, the two of you collapse into muffled snickers, high on the mood you’ve both created and giddy with the feeling of familiarity that you’re MORE than fucking willing to drown yourselves in.

You both wipe down your respective sticky body parts with wayward napkins that you grabbed from the concession stand and when you simmer back down, both of your elbows land on the armrest between you at the same time.

Instead of yanking himself away again, he shifts, grumbles irritably at having his space intruded on, and settles for putting his hand on top of yours.

It’s funny that your first physical reaction is to stiffen like a virgin schoolgirl but it’s honestly not something that you’re expecting. You fall into the defense mechanism of staring straight ahead and pretending to be cool about it, but you can’t fucking help it, you have to slide your eyes over to look at your hands and just as you do that, he’s tentatively starting to push the tips of his fingers against the webbing of skin between your own.

You spread those babies apart a little, curious to see if he follows through with the silent request, and sure enough he goes for fucking gold and threads everything together. All you feel now is pleasant pressure between your fingers and a slightly sweaty palm coating the back of your hand but it’s okay, it’s _so okay_ , you can’t really believe how _so okay_ it actually is. Your brain is going straight into tunnel-vision on the contact and your poor, depraved body is starting to wake up a little.

And your heart is fucking. hammering.

Like hell you can even pay attention to the rest of the damn movie. Not that you _really_ want to; what’s happening right here with you is way more fucking interesting anyway. Unfortunately, the second the film is over and the lights start to come up, he’s pulling himself away from you and standing up, rolling his shoulder on the same side like he’s cramping. And you’re still in your seat, just sitting there like a fucking brainless blob and staring up at him like ‘is that it?’ even though he never promised you anything further than middle-school level hand-holding.

Not that you’d label what you were feeling during said hand-holding as ‘middle-school level’.

 _Woof_.

You leave the theatre with him in a weird, distracted fog. When you hit the nearest bus stop to take you to your next destination, he takes the opportunity to mumble something at you, so quietly that you have to ask him to repeat himself.

He leans in closer, his shoulder touching your arm. You’re prompted to look at him.

His eyes are amazing. His expression is totally unguarded. You’re stunned by how attracted you are to him in just this one measly fucking moment.

“I said,” he murmurs. “was that okay?”

You successfully restrain yourself, but your fingers are itching to reach down and do it again just to make a damn point.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: this chapter contains underaged drinking.
> 
> * * *

You do all of your best thinking in moving vehicles.

There’s something about watching scenery and homeless people pass by outside of a car or bus window that really gets your brain going. Weird, right? Happy Dave Strider Surprise #312: Having a total lack of control in where you’re going and how you’re getting there settles you down the way looping a sound bit of a gentle rainstorm or distant crickets would for someone else. Entrusting yourself and your destination to another person, removing any and all responsibility on the matter completely from your hands, gives you a little bit of time to reflect on shit and mentally organize yourself. That kind of stuff stresses most people out, but for some reason it relaxes you.

Your road trip from Texas to New York was the best fucking thing that ever happened to your progress in ‘healing’ after the reset because you didn’t just have minutes to yourself. You had _days_ , especially with the way Bro drives. He left you alone for the most part, too; only really bugged you when you managed to doze off and you were coming up on a rest stop, or when he decided to take a break from playing Cash’s A Thing Called Love album for the six-thousandth time to let you plug in your own music for awhile.

It’s funny; you took Karkat to see a movie first because you figured it’d be a good talking point during your next bout of public transportation, but other than telling him where you’re going (dinner, which he ‘meh’s at softly and you can kinda understand why, because when you want to take in a city and explore shit you’ve never seen before stopping to eat is like a big annoying road block) you don’t really talk to him once you’re actually seated. And he doesn’t talk to you. You’re not sure what he’s up to but you start thinking about how quickly you flipped yourself around in regards to this date.

It’s still kind of astonishing. This morning your stomach was almost aching with your doubt and the only thing you could do to make yourself feel better was to repeat _This is a date_ like a broken record in the back of your skull and wonder if maybe you could get some play out of this, if anything. You still wouldn’t say no to the ‘get some play’ aspect, let’s be real, but _literally_ under five minutes of being next to him in that theatre, every single shred of doubt that you had before vanished entirely. You don’t think you’ve ever felt initial discomfort turn on its head THAT quickly before.

You can’t even get started on what holding his fucking hand did to you.

And this is where you are now. Starting out highly unconvinced, winding up barely able to restrain yourself from crawling all over him in public.

Life is interesting sometimes. Interesting and unpredictable.

All of the events leading up to this bus ride should have been more than enough to tell you that.

You’ve chosen a lively, loud place for dinner, which was actually a great ignorantly precognitive move on your part because once the two of you are off the bus it’s pretty clear that the playful mood from earlier is quieting _way_ the hell down and it’s your job to make sure it picks up again. You understand yourself pretty well; ‘quiet’ does not translate to ‘brooding’ with you like, ever, but Karkat is cut from an entirely different cloth. You’re learning gradually that the fundamentals of what makes him _him_ hasn’t changed much at all since the reset. Karkat still wears ‘quiet’ in two ways that you’ve experienced during his visit so far – one is grumpily introspective, and the other is warily concerned.

You don’t want either of those eeking their way into this date.

Karkat looks a little uncomfortable at first, when the two of you step off of the bus. The building is relatively non-descript save for the establishment name in huge block letters across the top of the front awning, and you can already hear music thrumming from the inside.

“Good,” Karkat remarks dryly as the bus pulls away and leaves him abandoned in your brilliant decision forever. “Having my eardrums violently torn out and crushed beneath the heels of a hundred filthy New Yorkers was a _really_ good idea.”

“It’s fine,” you say casually. “It’s just music, it’s not like people are gonna be mid-brawl the second we open the door or anything.”

“Before we go in there,” he says, his tone unchanged. “Tell me honestly if you just took me to a fucking dive bar as part of a date. And I’m putting stress on ‘honestly’.”

“Fool, this isn’t a dive bar.” You indicate to the awning with the letters. “This is a food joint. Burgers and beers. And loud indie music basically directly over your head the entire time but you start to not notice that part after awhile.”

He raises a thick eyebrow at you. His mouth is a straight line. The undersides of his eyes are puffed with skepticism. He’s fucking adorable. “You’re nineteen,” he drawls disbelievingly. “How in the hell do _you_ get beers here?”

“They’re notorious for only carding only like, sixty percent of the time.” Fact. You and John have gotten drinks with the right bartenders here before because only a couple of them _actually_ give a fuck about who they’re pouring alcohol into, as long as they get tipped. “They got a million different brews here, too.”

His ‘tight asshole’ expression relaxes a little bit but he’s still not bull rushing the door with unbridled excitement, which you take as a bad sign.

“Don’t tell me you hate beer or something,” you say.

He rolls his eyes and starts forward without any indication that he wants you to follow him, or cares if you do or not. “I’m not a gigantic fan of burgers,” he corrects you over his shoulder.

“Then have a nice salad,” you tell him flatly as he opens the door. “And review the basics of being fucking grateful while you’re at it. There WILL be a pop quiz later, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Shut up Dave,” he hisses because he’s never known how to gracefully accept that he’s wrong about something, but most of the sentiment is lost anyway by the fresh increase of decibels that you walk straight into.

The place is pretty busy, but it’s not as packed as it typically is on Fridays or Saturdays. Karkat is already sticking out like a sore fucking thumb, looking around like a panicked animal but trying REALLY hard to keep a neutral and uninterested expression on his face.

You swipe two menus from the box beside the door and nudge him a little. “Here’s the scoop,” you tell him, leaning in closer toward his ear to be heard over the music without shouting. “We grab menus, we snag a table, we order and pay for the food and drinks at the bar and they get brought out to us.”

He nods mutely and starts weaving around socializing patrons. You follow him until he finally finds an empty spot for two, stuffing himself into the booth as soon as he gets a chance like he’s glad to not be up and sandwiched between a bunch of strangers. You plop down into the chair at the opposite side of the table and slap his menu down in front of him.

“Order whatever you want,” you say. “I got it.”

“Stop paying for me,” he barks back at you like a stubborn brat. “I can handle my own food, thanks. I don’t want your charity.”

“It ain’t my charity, it’s Bro’s. Now be quiet and look at your menu like a nice little nightmare so we can get some brewskies going, here.”

He grumbles something too quietly for you to hear but grudgingly looks down at his options.

After you’ve scanned through your usuals and chosen which one to stick to this time, you crane your neck around to peer back at the bar. It takes you a second but you catch sight of the two bartenders on duty and to your _fucking horror_ , they just happen to be the ones that you KNOW have carded you in the past and are probably totally on to your tricks at this point. Damn. 

You turn back around and Karkat’s watching you. Your disappointment must show on your face because he asks, “What’s wrong?” without the usual biting undertone.

“Eh.” You shrug. “No beers tonight, buddy, sorry. The one night I decide to bring someone from out of town here is the one night both of the d-bags who check IDs religiously are working.”

Karkat’s eyes flick over your shoulder to glance at the bar. “Let me order, then.”

“What.”

“I said, let me order.”

“You’re a year younger than me.”

He smirks again, rising from his seat, all sassy and sly and confident and _down, boy_. “Just trust me. What do you want?”

You give in to your curiosity way too quickly. “Number five with fries and a pint of Hop Devil.” He shuffles around the table and you push your money into his open hand. “And note that I’ll be witnessing the horrendous and hilarious failure with this experiment from back here.”

He doesn’t say anything, just makes his way toward the bar with his head up and his shoulders squared.

You watch him wait behind a couple of other people and when he hits the bar, he doesn’t even fucking smile at the guy while he places his order, just talks it out right at him and you think, yeah, okay, he’s not even kissing ass, how does he expect _these guys_ to let him slide an alcoholic order by them at his age? The LEAST he could do is engage a little bit to win them over in his favour.

Then you realize that as your inner monologue has been chastising him for his inability to socialize the right way (like you’re in any fucking position to judge, right?), he’s finished ordering and the bartender he ordered from is preparing two pints.

You figure the tender’s gonna make the drinks and try to ID him when he pays, and then probably be pissed when he realizes that he’s dealing with an underage punk and has to throw the beer out. You’re almost starting to pity Karkat, actually, because bartenders can get _real_ surly when they feel like they’re getting gypped out of their tip money, but no. 

Nope.

Of _course_ it doesn’t go as you’re expecting.

The drinks are brought to him and he just hands the money over like he’s buying fucking chocolate bars.

He turns to look at you while the bartender gets his change and grins haughtily, visibly pleased with himself.

You squint back.

When he finally comes back with the beers and the placard displaying your order number for the servers, he places everything down before dumping your change onto the tabletop between you.

“Mine was a light beer,” he explains casually. “So it was a little cheaper.”

You squint at him harder.

“You just ordered two pints,” you say. “From one of the only assholes here who will card fifty year olds just to be sure he isn’t serving booze to a minor, and you did it without even ATTEMPTING to pull any kind of ID out.”

“Yes,” he says simply, like you’re making a mountain out of a molehill for no fucking reason.

“ _How_?”

He shrugs. “I don’t have an ID.”

“That… doesn’t answer or explain anything, dude.”

“No, literally,” he repeats, slower. “I don’t have an ID. I don’t have an identity.”

“…okay, what?”

“I’m almost totally sure it’s an Sburb thing,” he says. “But I’ve never needed an ID. Or a social security card. I don’t have a birth certificate. Nothing. No matter where I go, where I am, or what I’m doing, I’m never carded or asked for any form of identification for anything. Like my identity is fabricated and the entire world has been reconfigured to just… accept it as it is.”

You slump back into your seat. “You’re shitting me,” you breathe.

He leans his elbows against the table on either side of his beer and holds his hands up, palms facing you.

“Look closely,” he says.

You do.

And it takes you a few seconds but finally you catch it, and you see that the pads of his fingers are smooth as anything. Not a single goddamn fingerprint fucking _anywhere_. He doesn’t even have distinguishing lines tracing along his palms. All he has are creases between his finger joints and where his hands can move and bend, but nothing at all to identify him. 

That’s the coolest thing you’ve ever seen.

You raise your eyes to his face. “You’re still a fucking alien, bro.”

He snorts and lowers his hands, curling them around his mug of beer. “Some things _don’t_ change, right?”

You lift your own mug and take several long, bitter swallows.

 

\- - -

 

You are twenty minutes past the Great Fingerprint Reveal and you’ve finished more than half of your pint on a mostly empty stomach.

Hop Devil is very strong.

Your food has arrived and you’re attempting to soak up some of the alcohol in your system with it but your head is swimming as he explains his theories about his identification and you keep forgetting about your meal altogether. You can’t even really focus on or correctly process what he’s saying; you’re just wretchedly tipsy and still reeling from the fact that Karkat is still more alien than human even in human form, and you WISH you could explain why that attracts you more to him but mentality is a funny, fickle thing, especially yours, and you will probably never understand it.

But wasn’t that the thing that attracted you to him in the first place? Him being an alien? Him being _different_ and borderline savage when he was angry and having a body that SORT OF matched your own but had little differences that you found fucking fascinating? This no-prints thing is clearly not a big deal to him at all since he’s probably totally used to it after all this time, but it’s a new and major development for you.

Maybe it’s the booze but you can’t stop thinking about it.

You’re pretty certain it’s the booze.

His biggest theory, he tells you, is that while Sburb ‘re-birthed’ him into a humanoid body, there were still little things about him as an actual living, existing creature that it couldn’t – or didn’t know how to – overwrite. He confirmed with the other trolls that they were reset with the same changes and same lack of identity, too, so it’s not just him. Seems the game wasn’t as smart as everyone suspected; he refers to his newly appointed physiology as a ‘glitch’ and you almost laugh because the word is just too fucking on-point to describe what the game’s done to him.

You’re about to tell him that from an onlooker’s perspective, nobody would ever be able to tell that something’s up because the human form is actually pretty perfect as far as appearances go. But then you remember that one of the first things you noticed about him when you saw him again was his lack of marks. Freckles, moles, birthmarks, shit, even pimples – he doesn’t have _anything_. 

So, you revise your observation and dumb it down to a bleary, “Look human enough to me, at least.”

He snorts, trailing his print-less fingers idly along the condensation beading on the surface of his mug. “Maybe,” he says. “But I never said that I was _actually_ human.”

…which is true, you realize. He’s been batting aside ‘so you’re a human now’ questions and hasn’t outwardly told anyone that he’s officially joined your magnificently ridiculous species.

You knock back the last couple gulps of your drink and push the mug across the table toward him.

He raises an eyebrow again. “Is this really _that_ shocking?”

“Same thing, please,” you say back, and he gets up and complies without another word.

Your second round of beer is not as easy as the first one was. 

Finishing your burger in silence sort of helps, but the silence itself is tricky. It’s like every time things start climbing upward on this date, something happens or comes up to drag everything right the fuck back down again. _Muy_ discouraging.

He’s still eating when your food is gone and you take the opportunity to watch him, the steadfast center of a now slightly swaying room.

How very fucking symbolic. 

Something must be wrong with you because tonight has been like, the biggest and most unexpected turning point for your opinion of both him and your attraction to other people in general. Emotionally, at first, you definitely had sympathy for him – guy’s been through a sort of hell that towers way above your own – and in the same vein, you sort of admired him for crawling through all the shit and coming out of it relatively (shockingly) stable. Physically, you were admittedly half disinterested, half intimidated by him and you had no idea what to do with your own fucking ambivalence because you’re supposed to be a real easy-going dude, _goddamnit_ , and when things make you all complex and shit it fucks your entire Cool Agenda up.

To make you feel even MORE complex, now he’s gone and admitted that he’s still holding on to the old him, the him you got close to and apparently had sex with on a regular basis before the end of the game??? ( _???!!_ ), because he might look like a human but he doesn’t think he actually IS one. Which is fine, no hate no shade, but YOUR problem is that your fuzzy brain is now persistently trying to imagine if he has any other physical attributes that disprove his supposed humanity.

You can’t really remember what his body looked like before, not clearly, but you at LEAST remember that it was structurally different and you liked it a hell of a lot. Shit, you HAD to have liked it if you went so far as to bone the guy.

Halfway to drunk and now, kind of aroused. Cool. You’re really hitting it out of the park tonight, Strider.

“Should I have just… not said anything?”

You look up at him.

“What?”

His eyes have narrowed. “You seem kind of out of it and I can’t help but think that my loose tongue is the reason.”

Did he really have to word it like that? Like, ‘loose tongue’, seriously dude?

You shift in your seat a little.

“It’s okay,” you assure him. “Actually, I think it’s cool.”

His eyes narrow even more. 

“Truth be told,” you go on – who has the loose tongue now? “Even when you first showed up lookin’ all Average Joe, I still couldn’t really actually see you as human. Maybe in looks for the most part but… Idunno, maybe it’s ‘cause I got so used to you NOT being human or something but the looks only phased me for like a hot second before I stopped noticing it. …and hopefully that’s not the offensive answer?”

“No,” he says. “That wasn’t offensive at all.”

“A’right, peachy.”

“I’m actually kind of complimented.”

“Ohyeah?” You grin at him before you can stop yourself.

His turn to take a drink.

“It’s more complicated than just being flattered, asshole,” he says, and pauses when a server comes by to clear your dishes for you. 

When he’s gone, Karkat adds (almost not loud enough to hear), “I don’t want to be human.”

“Ah, come on, we’re not ALL that bad. Like, at least eighty percent of us are decent.”

“I just don’t _want_ to,” he presses. “It’s too much change all at once for me, especially with the society. I don’t know if I can actually get used to it all the way. I’ve been alive too long in my own customs and my own species to just _adapt_ like it’s so fucking easy to do. I’m not a gru-- …a baby, I can’t just… accept it and grow into it.” 

He takes in a breath, lets it out. 

“I liked what I was before.”

“I like what you are now,” you blurt. 

Seems your restraint is lost in a sea of booze without a fucking life jacket on.

Hoo yeah, there’s no bouncing back from that one. You have no choice but to stare him down like you _totally_ meant to tell him that. And really, you did. But maybe not just yet.

He averts his eyes to somewhere across the room behind you. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

Now you take a drink. It’s becoming a game. Tag, you’re it.

“Are you going to be able to finish that entire thing?” he asks.

You look down at the beer like it’ll answer him for you.

“Idunno,” you respond, because you’re clearly already beyond tipsy with the way you’re letting your words fly and if you DO finish this, you’re probably gonna be heading full-steam ahead into Drunksville, USA. “You itchin’ to leave already or something?”

He shakes his head, takes another gulp from his own mug. “Not necessarily, but if you drink enough to vomit in the cab on the way back I’m probably going to kill you.”

“Fair enough.”

“Are we even doing anything after this?”

… _are_ you?

You’d planned ahead and thought of taking him to the cool sight-seeing junk but you feel yourself becoming more and more distracted by him than actually wanting to _do anything_. You also feel like maybe all of this stuff is worth telling him, but while you’re not _hammered_ , you definitely don’t exactly have the capacity to be calculatedly subtle about shit right now.

“If you wanna,” you say, shrugging a shoulder, gulping down another mouthful of what is now becoming only half a pint. “I’ve had the reigns this whole time, bro, what do _you_ wanna do?”

And the fucker just blankly stares at you.

For way too many seconds.

You lean forward a little. “Earth to Karkat.”

Game over – he finishes his drink.

“Maybe we should go back.”

You nod and say, “Okay.” and try to mask your minor disappointment behind the rim of your mug as you quickly catch up to him.

“I figured maybe we could… watch another movie or something.”

You maybe shouldn’t have finished two pints of beer because you feel all bloated and dizzy now but really, you’re nineteen, you’re entitled to make all sorts of fucking stupid decisions. 

“Says the guy who gave me shit for taking him to a movie earlier,” you respond.

He frowns, only a little bit. “I was going to suggest we watch it on your computer or something. Upstairs.”

Both of your eyebrows lift toward your hairline. “Like in _my_ room?”

He clears his throat. “Yeah. I mean, so nobody can disturb us. Disturb… the movie.”

You feel the smirk but you don’t remember commanding your face to do it. “Uh huh.”

“I just don’t want it to become a group thing again,” he forces out and _god_ he sounds so fucking defensive. “Everything has an ulterior motive with you, what the fuck.”

“I only call it like I hear it, friend,” you tell him as you dig clumsily through your pocket for cash to tip the server with. Wallets are for hippies. “You oughta know me better than that by now.”

He hums in a non-committal kind of way as you throw a couple of bucks onto the middle of the table and unsteadily rise to your feet. “Movie it is, then. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

You make your way outside (the world feels a LOT more wobbly now that you’re vertical) and just as you’re about to try hailing for a cab, you feel tentative fingertips graze along one of your palms.

You look back at him and he’s watching cars whizz by you on the street.

“You meant that, didn’t you?” he mutters. “Liking things the way they are right now.”

Full of booze and over-productive hormones, you lift your free hand for a taxi and allow the fingers on the other hand to slowly entwine with his own.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy pride here are some smooches.
> 
> * * *

Neither of you say anything out loud, but it’s pretty clear that ‘watching a movie’ isn’t exactly the main focus at the front of your minds.

It’s sort of gone without saying throughout the course of your date that something has been culminating. It’s been slow and gradual with its ups and downs and you sort of prefer it that way – keeps you interested, keeps you honed in. Even though you just downed two pints of beer and can’t really focus on anything else, you sure as shit aren’t about to lose concentration on the other occupant of this backseat. Tipsy or no, you know exactly what may be in it for you if you continue to be a good boy and play your cards right.

You’d feel kind of bad hoping so hard on the possibility of fooling around with him if you didn’t actually _like_ him so fucking much.

You’re very glad that the cab ride doesn’t take long.

What you’re expecting is to pay off the cab and slide into the house acting all natural and shit because it’s not too late yet and people are most likely still awake. Maybe you’ll grab a water and something to eventually crunch on while you start to sober up, and you’ll watch your movie and _if you’re lucky_ you might not have to watch the entire thing. That’s what you’d like. That sounds like a decently-paced night to you. You are all about those plans.

Karkat doesn’t like it when you have your way, you guess, but in this particular occasion there’s ZERO fucking room for complaints with the exception of your genuine surprise when you’re dragged away from front door by the back of your shirt.

You’re spun around before you can start cracking any skulls, but your urge to destroypunchdestroy is snuffed out pretty quickly when Karkat grabs your face in both of his hands and pulls you down to kiss him.

It’s not one of those big, dramatic love-scene kisses, either. It’s quick. It’s _really_ quick. It’s so fucking quick that you don’t even have time to properly reciprocate before it’s done and over with. He lingers afterward, only for a second, and then he’s around you and letting himself into your home like he owns it while you stand there in the same spot waiting for your limbs to figure their shit out and start moving again.

Well.

Yeah.

You mean. 

Yeah.

What?

That was so forward that even you weren’t expecting it. Not that you’re complaining, no fucking way would you be complaining. He’s probably wanted to do that all night just as badly as _you’ve_ wanted to. You just wish he gave it more than half a second so you could actually kiss back. He was probably nervous. But shit, at least he had the balls to do it in the first place which is something you can’t say for yourself.

Like you said.

Life is interesting.

You finally unfreeze and kind of shuffle inside after him. He’s nowhere to be seen at this point; the first thing you DO see is Jade on the couch just beyond the living room archway, ignoring the television in favour of curiously arching her neck around to look back at you. There’s a shadow moving along what little bit of the kitchen wall that you can see from your position.

You raise your eyebrows at her and point toward the kitchen questioningly. 

She nods and you can tell by the slight knitting of her eyebrows that she’s fucking DYING to ask you why the two of you just came in one after the other instead of together but you kinda have no time to sit around and gossip and give each other manicures, so you shoot her a thumbs up and launch yourself up the stairs to make sure you didn’t leave anything dirty or incriminating out before you left.

You are, of course, assuming that Party for Two in Dave’s Room is still on.

It’s surprisingly decent but you do have to kick a few things under the bed. Since you’re going into this under the pretense of watching a movie, you also use the opportunity to get your laptop open on your computer chair, place it next to the bed, and scan through the movies you have saved on your hard drive. You are not particularly interested in watching anything anymore so you eeny-meeny-miney-moe it and just click a random thing, you don’t even catch the title. It’ll be a happy surprise, you guess.

You queue the movie up, keep it paused, sit on your bed with your back against the wall it’s resting along, and wait.

And then your brain starts doing the thing. The thinking thing, where it’s all ‘Yo bro you sure you know what you’re doing because it sounds like you wanna grab some sausage tonight or something’ and then you mentally frown very loudly at yourself because you sound like SUCH a dickhead when you put it that way. 

Karkat’s sort of special, you’d like to think. He’s an exception in basically every way that you can think of. He doesn’t fall into the Just A Dude With Dude-Junk category. Thinking about touching another man’s body, just some random dude, usually just makes you like ‘okay sure I guess so’. But then you think about touching specifically _him_ and magical things start to happen to you. 

Magical, mythical things to your precious, precious goods.

God you need to stop, why the fuck did you drink two pints.

What’s ALSO important, though – and you suppose this is a good thing, here – is that you wouldn’t be a hundred percent butthurt if he decided NOT to fool around tonight. You obviously want to because you’re nineteen years old and severely sexually depraved, but that aside you’re also content with the idea of literally just sitting around and watching a movie with your old best friend.

It’s whatever he wants, at this rate.

He finally comes up with a bottle of water in each hand. You wanna try to greet him in a cool, casual but still sort of sexy way but before you can manage anything he thrusts one of the bottles into your face and commands, “Drink.”

You do, because beer makes your mouth feel sticky and gross. It occurs to you while you’re drinking that maybe you should have taken an extra precaution and brushed your teeth or something. Oh well.

He takes a second to drink from his own bottle before setting it aside and asking, “What are we watching?”

“I have no clue,” you reply. “I just opened the first thing the cursor landed on so we’ll find out together.” You give the spot beside you a firm, loud slap. “Hit play, get back here, and get comfy.”

He taps the space bar on your keyboard and crawls forward onto the bed. Instead of taking a seat directly beside you, he moves the pillow you set down for him from the vacant spot at your side onto your lap.

“Hey now,” you mutter, admittedly a little surprised.

“Shh,” he snipes at you, reorganizing his limbs and getting settled with his head on the pillow and his body stretched out along your bed.

Well, if that’s how he wants it.

“Jurassic Park?” he asks as the movie starts up. He’s looking at the screen, not you, but he’s smirking.

“I’m so fucking cool,” you reply. You are not sure what to do with your arms, so you keep them braced at your sides for the time being. “It’s okay to be jealous, not everyone can have this kind of swag.”

He laces his fingers together on his stomach. “Uh huh,” he says flatly. “You should give lessons.”

“Not just something you can learn, my man.”

“Be quiet and let me watch your movie.”

You have Karkat on your bed with his head in your lap, being casual and tooling around with you. You could actually give three fucks about dinosaurs right now – something that is, for you, highly unusual – and sure, in the back of your brain you’re still kind of hoping he’ll lose interest in the movie and redirect the interest to you, but this isn’t so bad at all.

It gets even better when your arms start to tire out bracing themselves against the bed, and you tentatively relocate them with one across his midsection and the other one’s hand playing with his hair. He doesn’t make any moves to stop you or tell you to knock it off. He doesn’t seem annoyed in the slightest. He takes a deep breath in, hums it out, and continues watching the movie like everything’s hunky fucking dory.

Which it is. It _so_ is.

Nothing like the beauty of sick Triceratops shit-piles to assist proper reflection on your own contentment.

This hanging out thing, it’s working for you way better now. You kinda feel like this is _really_ a date, like… not only did you go out, see a movie, and have dinner, but now you’re relaxing at home, lounging together and casually but still somehow intimately touching and being totally fucking okay with the entire world. This isn’t like your high school dates. This is way better. You don’t need to be expecting nookie on a first date, anyway. You really never thought that the two of you would have this back again, and you’ll be damned if you’re going to look a fucking gift horse in the mouth over your own stupid hormones.

At one point his phone starts vibrating like crazy in his pocket – a text message, you’re guessing, since it’s only three steady thrums – and you’re curious because you haven’t actually _seen_ him on a phone for like, the entire duration of his stay so far. 

He moves enough to pull it out and look at it, but instead of answering he just slides the thing back into his pants and keeps watching the movie.

The idea of him ignoring someone else in favour of spending time with you feels way too damn good to be normal.

It’s a dick move to ask ‘who’s texting you’ when you’re not even through your technical first date yet, so you shrug it off and take a stab at giving those fucks about dinosaurs again. It gets to a point where you actually do start to get a little invested in the movie but Karkat’s voice drags you away just as a goat is about to get viciously mauled apart. 

“You’re so fucking weird,” he says.

You look down at him with a quirked eyebrow. 

“Your shades,” he clarifies. “You even kept them on in the theatre. I know you have an imaginary reputation to maintain but you CAN take them off around me, you know.”

“Yeah, I know I can,” you reply. Imaginary reputation, who does this dickwad think he is.

“So do it. They’re annoying me.”

You can’t help it; you grin down at him as you nudge your chin vaguely in the laptop’s direction. “They’re about to show us the big daddy of dinos and you’re worried about what’s on my face? Stop watching me and watch the movie if they bug you so bad.”

He stares up at you from your lap. “Why won’t you just take the damn things off, what are you so afraid of?”

“Nothing.” You shrug. “I just don’t like to take them off.”

His eyes are now slits, they’re narrowed so much. You don’t like that look on him because it means he’s about to do something you’ll inevitably disapprove of. And you call it perfectly – he reaches up and slides the fucking things right off of you.

You make no moves to stop him because you know he’s gonna do it whether you want him to or not.

You squint down at him. “Are you satisfied, or is there anything about myself that I should be changing for you while you’re at it?”

He doesn’t respond. He toys with the shades in his hands for a second, thankfully careful not to touch the lenses, before he starts lowering them toward his own face.

A part of you feels like maybe you should warn him not to do that, but then it strikes you that Karkat wearing your shades is so _fucking cute_ that you’re just gonna sit there and let him do it and suffer the consequences.

And it IS cute, for the full second and a half that he actually has them on.

“Ugh,” he says, and quickly removes them again. “…are you serious? Dave?”

Your grin widens considerably. “Yes?”

“They’re _prescription_?”

“Why do you think I never take them off?”

“Because they’re _prescription_?”

“Dude yeah, why is that so surprising? My eyes fucking suck.”

He looks totally dumbfounded.

“And they’ve been like that this entire time?” he presses. “Even back in Sburb?”

“Yup. Now we’re even. I have severe astigmatism and you have no fingerprints. We officially know too much about each other and should either get married or kill one another right now, either way it will be sexy and gloriously violent.”

“Why don’t you get normal fucking glasses, oh my god.” He inspects the glasses again like he’s now seeing them for the first time. “Why do you only wear _sunglasses_ to correct your vision?”

“Because they look cooler.” What the fuck else is he actually expecting for an answer, you’d like to know.

He makes eye contact with you and holds it for a second before he’s shifting onto one arm, leaning up to kiss you again.

This guy, what the hell.

It’s another quick one, but this time when he lingers it’s with his mouth only fucking millimeters from your own, IF that. You can just barely feel them there, this ghostly touch on your lips that actually gives you full-fledged goosebumps.

You slowly open your eyes. 

He’s withdrawing from you to lie back down in his previous position. 

“You sure are a go-getter today,” you mutter.

He responds by carefully putting your shades back on your face where they belong. The world darkens but the sudden sharp focus is relieving.

On your laptop, the now-revealed Tyrannosaurus lets out a bellowing roar.

“Yeah, me too,” you agree out loud.

Karkat snorts. “Do you people really think that you evolved from these things?”

Your gut reaction is to say something rude like, ‘You’re one of us now, you tell me’ but it occurs to you that Karkat probably hasn’t exactly paid the closest attention to any sort of civilization-based studies in school because what’s it to him, right? He’s already flat-out told you that he doesn’t feel like he’s human regardless of what the game fucking henshin-transformed him into. He could probably care less about the history of humanity and all of the earth shatteringly senseless fuck-ups that come along with it.

Yeah, instant reaction revision: go.

“Nah, not usually,” you respond. You go back to playing with his hair, but you’re a little bolder with your touches this time since he basically just gave you permission to be. “Less dinosaurs, more monkeys. It’s a long-ass story that people have a lot of different opinions on.”

“Do _you_ think you were evolved from monkeys?”

You are still too tipsy for discussions about Darwinism. 

“Against the other options? Yeah, I’d go with that. We’re all stinky and hairy and fucking clueless, so to me it makes the most sense.”

“Hm.” He actually thinks on that one; Karkat’s the only guy you know who would reflect seriously on someone calling the entire human race stinky, hairy, and stupid.

“Too bad it wasn’t lizards,” he says and you immediately agree. Too damn bad it wasn’t lizards. “You’d be at least a little closer to Alternians.”

You watch Sam Neill desperately climb a conveniently gnarled tree to get to a little boy trapped inside of a car lodged between the branches.

“What did Alternians evolve from?” you ask. “You called your babies grubs, right? Does that mean you were insects or something?”

He smiles vaguely, but his eyes drop from the laptop to the floor.

“I guess,” he replies quietly. “It’s kind of like you and monkeys, if you want to make that comparison.”

“So like. Close, lots of similarities?”

“Mhm.”

…did you just make a boo boo here?

“Dude, sorry,” you say, gently massaging the top of his head. “Idunno why I asked that, it was sort of too much, huh?”

“Not really,” he says, looking back up at you. “Have to keep it alive _somehow_ right?”

Ugh.

“If it helps,” you tell him. “You’re always gonna be a fucking weirdo alien to me.”

He studies you closely.

“Yeah,” he says, sitting up again, bringing his face close to yours and lowering his voice to the most attractive raspy baritone that you have ever heard in your goddamn life. “That helps.”

Your stomach flips and this time, _you_ lean in first.

Quick as the other two ninja-smooches from earlier on were, this one is a hell of a lot slower. You are such fucking wieners, pulling out every single first-date trope that fucking exists from the movies to the dinner to the alcohol to the kiss at the door and revealing secrets about yourselves and now this, this fucking kiss that you’re both holding your respective breaths against, too afraid to do anything with your hands for the time being and settling for experimenting with the closeness, the sensation of not _just_ being physically close but at the same time emotionally connected.

You have kissed this motherfucker so many times in the past. More times than you can actually remember. So why do you feel like this is the first time anything might be taken beyond an uncertain peck?

Karkat is the first to release the tension and start breathing again. He sighs into your mouth and it’s like loosening a vice around your own lungs, urging them to follow suit.

You can feel his head tilting a little more and his lips parting a little wider. You lift a hand to cup the back of his head and the pressure increases slightly. It’s been so long since the last time you had even THIS kind of thing happen to you, never mind the anticipation for more added on top of it, and you’re reminded of how _fucking good_ it actually feels to have a pliant, responsive person moving and breathing against you. Everything starts tingling and thrumming pleasantly. All of those poor, neglected appendages are starting to wake up. Rise and shine, boys.

He experimentally snakes his tongue past your lips, tracing the top front row of your teeth with it.

And out of fucking nowhere, even with your eyes closed, you can feel the entire room abruptly start to rotate.

Wow, okay.

You’ve been on teacup rides at amusement parks. You’ve been black-out drunk. You’ve fainted before. This feeling is like the worst parts of all three of those instances tossed into a blender and mixed into a giant fucking nightmare.

You hiss in through your nose and Karkat is instantly off of you, and you hear him saying your name in this really fuzzy, far-off voice but you’re a little preoccupied with maybe not getting nauseous enough to actually barf all over him and this wonderful thing that you guys just had for a second, there. You think you stammer out some sort of apology, but you’re not sure; the next thing that actually processes fully and successfully is a still-cold bottle of water being pushed against your forehead.

You lift your hand and hold it there yourself because it feels fucking great and you might die if it goes away.

Eventually, everything stops spinning and your stomach settles down enough for you to crack your eyes open. Somewhere in there your shades were removed again. There’s condensation from the bottle dripping down your face. Karkat is immediately in front of you looking like he’s about to shit a brick. 

“What the fuck,” you breathe.

“I was afraid that might happen,” Karkat says quietly, gently urging you to bring the bottle away from your head so he can open it for you. He holds it up again. “Can you drink?”

You can. You do. You devastate almost all of it.

“Okay,” you force out when you’re done. “So what the hell was that, if you were so afraid of it happening.”

“It’s a memory thing,” he tells you with a shrug, like it should have been obvious you fucking idiot. “You get dizzy whenever something familiar happens, right?”

“Uh huh.” You got a cold sweat starting on your back. You feel like you just got over a stomach flu or something.

“Well.”

He pauses. 

“What I did was familiar.”

You let out this weak, sad excuse for a laugh. “You’re kidding me.”

“You used to like when I did that,” he says sullenly. “I guess your brain latched onto it.”

That’s the worst news ever. Seriously. He means to tell you that you’ve been forcefully, nonconsensually packaged into this Normal Kid skin like a fucking sausage and are expected to lead a life that’s as ordinary as the next guy’s but you can’t even actually physically handle when the guy you like puts his goddamn tongue in your mouth? What the fuck, you suddenly feel _extremely_ screwed over.

He’s still watching you, clearly worried. It’s an expression you don’t believe you saw too regularly out of him in Sburb and barely at all since he’s been visiting. Not for anyone but himself, at least. There’s a difference, there. 

Just beyond him, an animatronic Brachiosaurus sneezes on a young girl.

“It’ll go away,” he reassures you. “A few days ago you couldn’t look me in the eye without having a reaction and now you can do it just fine.”

You breathe deep for a second. You can’t feel your pulse in your temples as prominently anymore.

He touches your hand, the one holding the water bottle.

“All we have to do is not rush into things. Let’s see how it goes for a few days.”

Guy only HAS a few days left. Then you’ll be without him again. 

You bite your tongue on that one. No need to downward-spiral when things are already kinda tense. It’s one of those situations, you know? Where the both of you are going to ignore the fact that he has a home to get back to, whether he likes it or not, until the day he actually has to leave and THEN you’ll start trying to figure shit out from there.

Right now, it seems more appropriate to work on fixing what Sburb ripped apart.

“A few days _without_ or a few days _trying_?” you ask, managing a stronger smile and feeling mighty proud of yourself for it because it visibly relaxes him.

His hand squeezes yours before it lets go. He’s half-grinning wryly back at you. “Trying, stupid.” He lays down again, same position as before except this time he’s more on his side and he’s tucking his arm up underneath your legs. “Obviously I’m concerned but I’m also determined.”

You go back to stroking your fingers through his hair. “Gotta get yours, huh?”

“Can you blame me?”

Ha.

Nope.

You really, really can’t.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURPRISE.
> 
> also I really dislike HTML, this took me way longer than it needed to.
> 
> * * *

It’s close to five in the morning when you wake up sitting upright with your back still against the wall.

Your laptop’s gone to sleep and Karkat’s head is still in your lap. He’s breathing slowly and methodically. He’s real pretty when he’s asleep because his face is relaxed and he doesn’t have so many damn knots in his forehead.

You gently nudge him awake and that changes instantly – he frowns and half-grumbles, half-whines as he attempts to suffocate himself further into the pillow. You are probably not going to get him to move very far.

Without any help from his grumpy ass, you shimmy the pillow off of your lap and sort of lead it, with him still fucking on it, toward the foot of the bed. You grab another pillow and drop it down next to his. You think maybe you should brush your teeth or at the very least take your jeans off, but the second you stretch your body out and put your head on that pillow, you’re fading right the fuck out, semi-consciously contented by the weight of someone else next to you.

 

\- - -

 

You have sort of an issue with waking up in new places or positions that you aren’t used to. It doesn’t _scare_ you, but you do that disorienting startle-awake thing until your brain catches up to you and tells you that it’s okay, you did this willingly the night before and everything’s good.

There seems to be no time between actually waking up and pushing yourself up into a sitting position. Your head is where your feet usually are and there’s a lump of blankets housing a person beside you. Both of these instances don’t ever happen so it takes you a second to remember the night before.

Movies, beer, kisses, dinosaurs, near-death from kisses.

Right.

You feel instant relief and you sigh, stretching your neck on both sides and making it pop sickeningly. You look down at the lump of blankets and see that Karkat HAS reached consciousness before you at one point or another, long enough to get his wallet and his phone out of his pants and put them next to his pillow. Your shades are sitting there with them.

You slide your own phone out of your pocket (falling asleep with jeans on is bad enough; sleeping with something still in said jeans is even worse) and check the time. It’s almost ten.

Karkat’s phone buzzes insistently as you’re reaching over him to grab your shades. On instinct alone, you squint down at it and see that he has like a thousand unread text messages from a sender called ‘TA’.

Who the fuck is TA. That seems familiar to you.

You don’t bother to actually read the messages that are displayed, though, because A) That’s kinda rude, and B) You don’t have your glasses on yet so you legitimately can’t.

“Bro,” you murmur as you gently shake his shoulder with one hand, sliding the shades on with the other. Your voice is like sandpaper, blegh.

He sucks in a sharp breath and lets it out as a growl. Instead of responding, he pulls the blanket further over his head.

“Dude,” you insist and shake him a little harder. “Wakey-wakey, your phone is blowing up.”

He slowly unravels himself and turns to look at you through only one half-open eye. He wears the just-woke-up look really well. His hair is fucking bananas and he’s cranky as all hell but he looks really cute without any reservations currently gnawing at him and you like it a lot. Maybe a little too much. You kind of just want to drape yourself over him and say nevermind and go back to sleep.

It might be something important if it’s all from the same person, though, so you raise your eyebrows at him. “Seriously, wake up all the way and check your damn phone, it keeps buzzing.”

His other eye opens and his eyebrows draw together as he shifts his attention from you to his phone.

You give in to your urge to be snuggly and lay back down as he starts looking at his messages, winding your arm around his slim waist and pushing your forehead against his back. Ahh yeah, that’s better. Except not REALLY better. The lower half of your body and mornings have never quite seen eye to eye; this is just making the usual daily A.M. Ache Between Your Legs worse. Oh well. At least you’re not alone in the struggle this time, nyuck nyuck.

He’s unresponsive for a minute or two which is fine, he’s not shoving you away from him (not that you really think he would at this point) or getting annoyed, big thumbs-up there. You actually start settling back into the hazy, warm folds of sleep again, but then he shifts abruptly and starts to sit up.

You withdraw from him and prop yourself up on one elbow, watching him closely. He’s still staring down at his phone. From the movement of his thumb, swiping in a repetitive up and down motion, you guess that he’s reading and re-reading something more than once.

“…you alright?” you chance asking him.

It’s like your voice snaps him out of it and he’s up on his feet in a fucking blink. “I need to make a call,” he says quickly and dismissively, and leaves the room without even looking back at you.

The fuck was that all about.

You try not to worry.

You’re not worried.

It’s totally fine. He _does_ have a life outside of you, regardless of how set-up and fabricated it actually is, and he’s got his creepy non-parent parents, too. It’s probably a South Dakota thing and has nothing to do with you. And you should be pointedly not caring about South Dakota things. Who would want to, right? You mean, it’s South Dakota, maybe someone picked too much corn from the wrong field this morning and it’s all over the news. You can just imagine the headlines. ‘Farmer Charged With Assault On Neighbor’s Corn Field – Witnesses Still In Questioning’.

So you’re kind of an ignorant fuck sometimes, _whatever_.

But ‘TA’.

That’s ringing a tiny bell or two.

Super distant, super far-off, but you recognize it.

Or maybe you’re just being an annoying, paranoid almost-boyfriend and reading way too far into it. Look at you – one date and the most minimal making out possible and suddenly you’re all protective and clingy and shit. Get a fucking grip, Strider, seriously.

You’re staring at your bedroom door, chewing on the inside of your cheek.

You do this for a solid twenty minutes before you decide to head downstairs for something to eat.

You note that the guest room door is shut when you leave.

 

\- - -

 

Two cold pieces of pizza, a thorough tooth-brushing, lots of restless channel-surfing and approximately one hour later, Karkat finally comes downstairs.

His footsteps are slow and heavy and he seems even more tired than he did when he first woke up. He stops at the bottom of the staircase and just looks at you like he isn’t sure what to say. You pat the spot next to you on the couch and he seems thankful to take the invitation.

You sit side by side and stare disinterestedly at the television. Commercials. Forgettable. Boring.

“Everything’s fine,” he speaks up without a word from you, setting his phone down next to him.

“Wasn’t sure if I should ask or not,” you say back.

“You don’t have to.” His tone is weird. Has a harder edge to it. “I’m fine, it’s fine, everything’s fine.”

Which means not a whole lot is fine.

“Wanna do something or go somewhere for awhile?”

He thinks on it for a second.

“No,” he finally decides. His posture starts to sag like he’s being slowly internally defeated by whatever the fuck just happened to him. “It’s… really totally okay.”

A long moment of distracted silence drifts between you.

You feel kind of lost, like you know you have a job to do as a prominent person in Karkat’s life again but you have no fucking clue what the job entails or how to go about performing it. Right now you feel like you connect more on an emotional level with the fucking creepy Charmin bears taking overly exuberant shits against trees on TV than you do with Karkat.

You glance at him again. He’s staring at his hands in his lap.

You reach over and take one of them, prompting him to look back at you.

Now is probably not the right time for a sentimental ‘don’t shut me out’ speech (not that you’re great or even remotely the slightest bit experienced at giving those, for the record) so you just kinda smile at him, because you don’t know what else to do.

Eventually he smiles back. It’s small and it’s crooked and it might be a kind of strained or forced but it IS there and that’s what matters.

“I did mean what I said yesterday, you know,” it comes to you randomly to say. “When I said I like how you are now.”

A small crease appears along his forehead.

“Why are you bringing _that_ up?” he asks, all suspicious like you’re leading him into something he won’t like by flattering or praising him.

You shrug a shoulder. “Idunno, actually. I just felt like telling you that I meant it.”

You watch his eyes try to find yours under the lenses of your glasses. You don’t think anyone has ever tried so thoroughly and so seriously to make eye contact with you like this before. What is he expecting to find, something to tell him that you’re fucking joking? He knows that you aren’t, so the tiny slice of disbelief that he’s showing you right now almost seems like a step backwards from last night.

Something is definitely wrong, here, but pushing the issue might make him close off even more.

So instead, you lean down and give him a short kiss because in your gut it feels like that’s the next best step. You’re fucking rusty at this pseudo-boyfriend bullshit, here, but you’re trying.

He hums when you pull back and immediately rises to his feet. He starts walking away from you.

Not… exactly the reaction you wanted or expected.

“No need to run for the hills or anything,” you tease, trying not to feel put-off. “I’m not gonna barf on you, my stomach’s fine right now.”

“I’m going to go brush my teeth, asshat,” he says back. “You just reminded me that I didn’t yet.”

Oh.

Well that’s fine, then.

You let him go, distantly wondering if this means he’s planning on letting you make out with him in the living room where people can walk in on you. You don’t know why, but the idea is ACTUALLY kind of appealing to you. Amusing, too; you can’t imagine what John’s face would look like if he came home from work and caught his two buddies playing an intense, steamy game of tonsil hockey on the very couch he parks his ass on every evening to play his video games. Fucking hilarious, that would _traumatize_ him.

You feel like probably nobody else in the house would care or say anything. Just John. Maybe Roxy, if she’s been drinking, but even for her it’s still a little too early.

Can you get away with it?

You bet yourself five bucks that you can.

Either way, you still have five bucks. See how smart you can be sometimes?

You glance down.

Karkat left his phone here.

…no, dude, you shouldn’t do that shit.

You really shouldn’t.

…but you could.

Okay, here’s where your moral compass starts to lose focus. You are REALLY good at keeping shit to yourself and not impeding on anyone else’s private business but you do slip from time to time. Trying to break onto Jade’s laptop, for example. But whenever you DO try to pull shit like that, it’s not really curiosity that weakens your resolve. It’s fucking concern. You wanted to know whatever made Jade cry or you would _actually_ go crazy.

And now, you want to know what’s visibly upsetting Karkat so much.

You look between the phone. The stairs. The phone. Stairs.

He probably isn’t gonna be up there for too much longer.

Gotta be now or never.

…okay yeah so you’re kind of a jerkoff. But you’re a jerkoff who feels things.

Fortunately Karkat doesn’t password protect his phone. It only takes a few taps and swipes to get to his text inbox and just as you thought you saw correctly this morning, all of the most recent texts are in the chat box from ‘TA’. You don’t bother to look at the others because that’s not why you’re doing this. That somehow makes you feel less guilty about it.

One of the messages you see came in last night.

Probably the one that he got while you were watching the movie, you're guessing.

The rest are all in one big block from way, way early this morning, anywhere between two and four.

_Oh my god who the fuck._

Wait a second.

Wait. A. Second.

Wait just a goddamn motherfucking _second_.

You reread the entire thing through one more time before you get out of his text inbox and click the phone off.

TA.

TA was a fucking troll. That’s not a name. It’s an abbreviation for a chat name, a Trollian one specifically, just like how your Pesterchum abbreviation used to be TG.

He called Karkat ‘KK’.

You remember that, too. Only one dude REALLY made that nickname stick for him.

That has to be Sollux.

Good to see that they talk regularly enough, but…

But ‘we found another one’ and ‘TC’. That’s what has you really thinking now. You KNOW you’ve seen that one before.

You pinch the spot between your eyes and try to recall all of the old Trollian names that you came across back then.

There weren’t too many of them but still, your brain is foggy on the details that were easier to dust away. You remember Karkat’s and Terezi’s with crystal clarity and unfortunately, ‘TC’ wasn’t Terezi.

“TC…” you mutter aloud to yourself. It’s right there, right in front of you, but while the T and the C are vivid as hell, the rest of the handle is too blurry to make out.

Tumultuous? Terrestrial? No…

You hear muffled footsteps approach the top of the staircase and start their way down.

God this is going to fucking bother you.

Torrentially Carnivorous? No. Fuck, you feel like you’re close, though.

Ten… tem… term… terminal?

Oh wait.

Wait, wait, wait, _wait_.

…no fucking way.

The fog dissipates and the name fucking appears, just like that. Like fucking magic.

“Sorry about that,” Karkat says as he reaches the doorway, and you look up at him.

The look on your face must reflect what you’re feeling because it freezes him in his tracks.

“What?” he asks. His voice sounds small.

His eyes jump to his phone.

He knows exactly what you did.

Which was wrong, sure, but you’re glad you fucking did it.

This is maybe something he should have told you about from the get-go.

“Terminally Capricious,” you say in the calmest voice that you can muster.

And Karkat blanches.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lengthy dialogue and lots of cursing, on our next installment of Teenage Boys Are Super Dumb.
> 
> * * *

It’s nearly dinnertime.

Karkat hasn’t spoken to you all day.

You can understand why, but that’s not fixing the situation even a little because you’re pretty pissed off, yourself.

What’s really got you stewing is that you haven’t talked about anything yet. After you _dared to speak_ that fucking Trollian handle aloud – and you are still floored that you were even able to remember it properly after all this time with everything that could have gotten in the way and completely muddled it – he stared at you like a scared fucking puppy for a minute, then grabbed his phone off of the couch and stormed upstairs.

You’d called out to him, “Way to stay and talk about it like an adult.”

He’d responded, “ _Fuck_ you.” Special emphasis on the ‘fuck’.

And that was that.

Like hell you’re gonna go knocking down his door asking for his forgiveness. No, fuck that. You will admit without any reservations that what you did was wrong and you should have used better judgment when the idea came to you in the first place. You are absolutely and totally, one hundred and ten percent in agreement that you are a _gigantic_ asshole for looking at another person’s private text messages. That not only breaches the laws of friendship, but it also really shits on the laws of relationships in general.

You might be an immature douchebag about most things but that doesn’t usually transfer over to the really heavy shit. You know when to own up to the douchebaggery.

But in the same vein, keeping an important little bombshell purposely away from you was ALSO a dick move and you aren’t sure how to place your feelings about it. Whatever feelings they are, they are definitely negative, but you don’t know where along the negative spectrum they’re currently falling.

You’re battling the instinctual urge to feel guilty because you are a butthurt motherfucker and the idea of Karkat accepting THAT MUCH CRAZY back into his life after the entire thing has been re-written for him makes your fucking skin crawl.

You’ve been shut up in your room the whole time, laying on your bed and thinking about it.

He has two days left in New York and you’re away from him, sulking.

You feel sort of (probably improperly) validated in your sulkiness so you’re not really letting your conscience eat at you quite yet. You’re too busy being really, _really_ unnaturally nervous about what might be transpiring.

Your take on this is that the trolls who’ve found each other ARE actively looking for more, regardless of who it is. Karkat’s told you that so far he’s reconnected with Sollux and whatshername, the Fifi one or something, but you guess that Sollux has been kind of hard-pressed to give up looking while Karkat’s off in another state farting around with the kids from the same game and wound up biting off more than he could fucking chew by finding the _one fucking guy_ that you’re assuming nobody ACTUALLY wanted to find.

Nobody except maybe Karkat.

Your stomach feels tight at the implications, there.

And you think maybe that’s why YOU feel so goddamned irritated by the whole thing.

Why did it have to be _that_ shithead and not like… Kanaya or Terezi? That guy treated Karkat like a piece of garbage back then. They were in a quadrant, which was a _commitment_ , even YOU understood that much, and he fucked it all up without even the smallest hair of sympathy or remorse for what he was doing to his own fucking best friend. You were the one to see the fallout in a way that the clown probably never did. You saw the rejection. You saw it _actually_ hurt him.

You have no idea what Karkat’s next move is going to be but you can’t shake the feeling that he’s gonna fucking run to him the first chance he gets. And that makes you, the one who’s actually been _making effort_ with him to bridge the gap that Sburb left between you, feel like ass.

Especially since you’re both at a stubborn stand-still and refusing to speak to one another right now.

You should have fucking snagged Sollux’s phone number when you had the opportunity to. You could’ve probably gotten all of the information you need out of him in no time.

Unless…

You turn your head to the left and look at your laptop, still on the chair where you put it last night.

How hard did Jade say it would be to get Pesterchum back again? You gotta really want it, right?

You slide your phone out of your pocket and open up a text to her.

You get an almost instant response.

You don’t get anything back for a long, drawn-out minute, not even the little “…” cloud that tells you someone’s texting you.

Then you hear footsteps pounding down the hall toward your door.

Crap.

You’re swinging into a sitting position just as your door bursts the fuck open.

“What the hell, Jade,” you say defensively but not angrily. “Fucking knock, what if I was beating off or something?”

Her arms cross over her chest. She stays in the doorway. She looks _real_ annoyed. “While texting me?”

“Well no but I mean who knows right?”

She moves into your room and shuts the door behind her. It doesn’t exactly _slam_ but it’s not done gently, either.

“At first,” she says. “I was all happy for you guys because SERIOUSLY, who actually gets the chance to hook up with their ex-boyfriend again after their entire lives are reset into a different time period, right? Who even gets the chance to do that??”

“Us,” you say simply. “Because we’re the only sorry assholes it’s ever happened to.”

She jabs a finger at you. “Okay, YOU don’t know that so you can’t say anything. But my point is I was happy because even when I tried to date you I kind of wanted this to happen, because you guys were such a good match.”

She gestures behind herself at the closed door.

“So why are you guys acting like stupid twelve year olds who can’t get their shit together today?”

_Ask that secretive motherfucker_ , you want to tell her. “It’s dumb and complicated,” you tell her instead.

She narrows her eyes at you skeptically. “Dumb and complicated enough to want Pesterchum again?”

“Why are _you_ so damn angry that I’m thinking about re-installing it?”

“Because I know you? And I know that when you make a random decision out of nowhere like that it means that you have some sort of ulterior motive behind it? You’re not asking for a friend, Dave, something’s going on with you and Karkat and I can tell you now that Pesterchum isn’t going to fix anything.”

You lift a hand, place it over your heart. “Jade, I’m hurt.”

“You’re fine, you asshead.”

You lean forward a little and squint at her even though she can’t see it. “Really, though, I thought my business was supposed to be my business, why are you getting so involved?” Asks Dave ‘Raging Hypocrite’ Strider.

Her arms fall to her sides. A little bit of the frustration melts out of her. “Because you’re my friends. You’ve both gone through the dumbest crap ever and now that you have a chance to be happy, you’re being stupid about stuff.”

Her tone of voice is peculiar. It’s that whole perception thing again. People don’t notice that you _watch_ them. You learn their quirks and their mannerisms. This is something that you’ve been doing ten times more than usual since the reset. Like ninety percent of the time, you catch when someone’s acting weird or out of character pretty easily.

Why the fuck is everyone choosing this week to act _weird_ around you, jesus h.

You study her for a second.

“You know what’s going on, don’t you?”

Her expression pointedly does not change.

“You do.”

“You’re being vague,” she dodges. “I don’t know what you’re suggesting.”

“You know what’s up with the trolls, is what I mean. That’s why you got so defensive about Pesterchum, because you knew exactly what I was thinking about using it for.”

She pauses. It’s a long pause.

Then she sighs and sits down cross-legged on the floor in front of you.

“I heard him talking since his room is next to mine,” she says slowly. “I could hear when he raised his voice through the wall.”

“So you just listened in without invitation?” Like you’re one to fucking talk, right?

“Nope,” she responds. “I just thought something was really wrong from what I was overhearing by being in my own room. Don’t be a jerk. So after it was quiet for a bit I poked my head out of my room to see if his door was open and everything was alright, and that was when he was coming out of his room. Since he was there, I asked, and he stopped to talk to me.”

So that’s why he took over an hour. He was busy telling Jade all about it when he planned on hiding it from you for fuck knows how long.

That kind of just makes you angrier.

“So I’m guessing he told you, then,” she says.

“Nope.”

She looks a little confused.

“How did you know, then? I didn’t think any of the other trolls contact you.”

“They don’t. He left his phone with me at some point.”

“…did you really go into his phone and look at his personal messages?”

“Look—“

“And you’re accusing _me_ of being nosy??”

You feel your defenses rise. “Listen, I know, I don’t need someone preachin’ no goddamn manners to me because I’m pretty aware that what I did was really stupid and rude—“

“Oh my god, Dave, _seriously_.”

“—but I was a little miffed that he apparently wasn’t planning on telling me jack, and even MORE miffed now that I know he spilled all the juicy gossip-beans to you without even fucking thinking twice.”

She’s back to being mad. Oops.

“You are being… SUCH a big baby right now,” she says exasperatedly. “He told me because I _asked_. He told me because _I’m_ the one he’s been talking to the longest out of all four of us. I’m guessing he probably DIDN’T tell you because he was trying to think of the right way to do it. Has that even crossed your mind yet?”

Of course it didn’t. You were too busy being offended.

“I don’t do secrets,” you say.

Well that’s a really stupid blind grab in the dark and she fucking knows it. “He’s been through enough already by this point, do you _really_ think he’d actually bother—“ Her voice goes mockingly wobbly and unsteady. “—kEeEeping biIiIig seEeEecrets from DaAaAave?”

You frown at her.

“NO, you dingus! Answer is NO.” She reaches out and punches your leg. Really hard, actually. “He just got hit with something big and he needs his own time to let it sink in, let alone immediately bringing it to someone who might potentially get jealous or mad about it.”

“I’m not his boyfriend,” you defend, and it’s occurring to you now that you really ARE starting to sound like a big baby.

She gives you a weird, annoyed look.

“I never said that you were?”

“You were implying it.”

“And you’re just making stupid, pointless excuses for yourself right now. _Stop_ , Dave. I don’t care if you’re dating or not or _whatever_ your deal is. You’re still mad about it, aren’t you?”

You stare at her.

God. She has a point.

You overreacted.

You run a hand through your hair.

“I screwed up, huh,” you give in.

Something in Jade’s expression loosens and seems to relax. “Maybe a little,” she says honestly. “Doesn’t matter what the reason is, looking through someone’s personal stuff isn’t okay.” She tilts her head at you. “…why did you even check in the first place?”

“He was acting funny,” you say with a small shrug. “He kept saying ‘it’s fine’ over and over and you know that means some semblance of shit hit a fan somewhere.”

TOTAL fucking contrast to what she looked like literal seconds ago, she smiles a little. “Huh. You really care about him, don’t you?”

You raise an eyebrow at her. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“No, I mean, more than you thought you did. We all care about him in one way or another but you’re seriously acting like the jealous, jilted boyfriend.”

“I told you we’re not boyfriends.”

You don’t know why you keep saying this when clearly you’d like to be. Maybe it’s because you’re fighting.

She rolls her eyes. “I said _acting_ , dummy. Who cares if you have the title or not, sometimes it just… is what it is.”

The amount of common sense that she’s gently meat-pounding into your head today is unreal and exhausting.

After a small silence, you breathe out heavily. “What’s your opinion?”

She draws her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. “About what?”

“The clown.”

“I’m…” She trails off; stops and thinks. “…I’m curious but like… carefully curious. That guy was important, you know? And not in a good way. I can’t remember what role he played when we got to the last push, but I’m assuming he never actually got better?”

“I assume the same thing,” you agree.

“It’s interesting to think about how the reset might have changed him.”

“’Interesting’ is a good word for it.”

“Yeah, see? I’m interested but I’m also worried about it. And I’m only worried because of how seeing him again might affect Karkat. The trolls remember more about the game than we do, right? So it’s like, what if they remember something really altering that we don’t?”

You look down at the floor.

“I should go talk to him, shouldn’t I?” you ask even though the answer is obvious.

“Duh.”

You half-sigh, half-growl as you rise to your feet. “This isn’t gonna end well, I bet.”

“Ye of way too much fucking pessimism,” Jade replies, also standing up. “I miss Cool Dave, go make up with him so Cool Dave comes back.”

“Excuse you. _Estoy cool_ , okay? Always and forever regardless of my mood and don’t you fucking forget it.”

She gives you a nudge toward the door. “ _Go_ already,” she says lightly. “I’ll be downstairs so you don’t feel like someone’s listening in on you.”

You let the both of you out of your room with a wry smile. “Yeah, okay. …thanks, Jade. I can always count on you to berate me into admitting my faults.”

She laughs a little and starts down the hall toward the staircase. “I’m here whenever you need that, trust me,” she calls back.

You bet she is.

You watch her until she disappears down the stairs. You turn and head in the opposite direction for the guest room, thinking that maybe this won’t be as bad as you’re suspecting, but once you’re at the door you suddenly have no idea how to go about this. Apologizing is hard. That’s why you try to wriggle your way out of doing it so often, if you can get away with it.

Taking in a deep breath, you raise your fist and rap it against the door.

You hear a muffled “What.” from behind it.

“Uh. Hey,” you respond. “It’s me. Can I come in?”

There is a REALLY long pause.

“Do whatever,” comes his stony reply, and you let yourself into the room.

He’s on his bed with his laptop in front of him, staring with intense determination at the screen. As expected, he looks pretty unhappy.

You shut the door behind you. “Hey,” you say again.

He doesn’t move or look at you. “Mm.”

You shove your hands awkwardly into your pockets and look around. He really hasn’t made himself at home at all since the last time you were in here a few days back. Everything that he owns is still either packed away or in the vicinity of his duffel bag. The only things that are out in the open are a laptop case on top of the dresser, a phone charger on top of that, and an open notepad on his nightstand.

The idea that he WAS unpacked and shoved most of his shit away in preparation of getting the hell away from you out of anger passes through your mind.

You move in a little closer. “Uh. So.”

He finally lifts his eyes to you.

“I, uh.” You shrug helplessly because these situations just make you so fucking uncomfortable. “…I did kind of a shitty thing,” you force out in a breath.

“Yeah you _kind of_ did,” he agrees instantly.

“I probably shouldn’t have done it,” you tack on.

“No,” he snaps. “No, you really fucking _probably_ shouldn’t have.”

His tone is biting, like he’s just itching to chew you out.

“Calm down,” you say, and you open your mouth to keep going but he suddenly sits up a little straighter.

“Calm down?” he repeats incredulously. “No, fuck that, and fuck you, Dave. I was calm enough until you came in here with your artificial fucking apology and if I calm down again, it’s sure as fuck not going to be so you can skirt around admitting that you’re a shithead.”

“Dude,” you say, because your temper is being prodded at. “Seriously? I DID come in to apologize, but you’re not fucking letting me.”

“You had the entire time standing around like an idiot mumbling at me to scrape up something proper like, oh, maybe _I’M SORRY_?”

“I was leading up to it, jesus fuck.”

“Leading up to WHAT?” He stands up, his fists tightly balled at his sides. “Two words, _two fucking words_ , and you couldn’t even manage that much. See, this is when I could never fucking stand you back then. Your tendency to try and make _everything_ someone else’s fault somehow, even if it’s something that YOU did wrong. I’m just as shocked by the news today as YOU are, so if you think for a SECOND that I’m going to stand by like a lovesick, doe-eyed dumbass while you try to turn the fact that you purposefully and INTENTIONALLY invaded my fucking privacy without having the decency to properly come clean about it back around on me, you can _get fucked_ , Strider, because I have been through too fucking much already today to bow down to you just because you’re too goddamn proud.”

He steps right in close to you. His eyes are burning. He looks like Karkat more than ever. It’s beautiful and you are actually, legitimately breathless.

“Maybe that horseshit works on other people,” he almost fucking growls. “And maybe the entire world is willing to spend the rest of its worthless, pre-assembled and completely manufactured existence kissing your fucking feet and thanking you for your good graces, but I can see _right fucking through you_ you cowardly fucking nooksniffer, and I PROMISE you that it won’t work on me.”

Something tightens in your chest.

You swallow against the feeling.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur.

“You’re an asshole,” he responds. He backs off the slightest bit, but he’s still pretty close. “Don’t _ever_ fucking do that again. I mean it.”

You nod a little. You feel weirdly numb, like all the fight was sucked clear out of you. “I know. I won’t.”

You haven’t seen him this hostile since Sburb.

This news about Gamzee must really be kicking him in the gut.

He stares you down for another minute before the tension drains out of his expression and he moves his gaze from your face to your chest. He’s like, a head shorter than you which isn’t THAT bad, but he seems a lot smaller now that he’s gotten all of that out of his system.

You do the first instinctual thing that comes to you – you pull him into a big ol’ hug and squeeze.

“I really am sorry,” you mumble into his shoulder.

You feel him inhale deeply, and then his arms wind themselves around your waist. It’s admittedly pretty comforting; you thought he’d stay mad at you a lot longer than that, but he’s probably just sick of feeling _bleugh_ at this point.

“Good,” he says against your collarbone. “You better be.”

“I was more worried than curious,” you tell him. “You came back acting all weird and you wouldn’t tell me anything—“

“I don’t have to tell you shit,” he cuts you off, but his tone isn’t spiteful anymore. Just tired.

You falter.

“Yeah,” you agree. “I know.”

And you stand there for a little while, just holding each other and trying to relax – him out of anger, you out of embarrassment – breathing against one another unevenly and probably both wondering what to do next. You feel kind of stupid for acting the way that you did. It’s possible that you could have excused that sort of shit when you were, like, sixteen, but you’re almost twenty (twenty-four, if you want to get REALLY technical) and maybe you’ve matured more than you thought, who knows. All you can say for sure is that you sort of almost broke Karkat’s trust and that could have ruined everything for you.

“…what are you gonna do?” you ask him tentatively. Might not be a good idea to press after that whole episode, but _now_ it’s actually just curiosity.

“What? About him?”

You hum affirmatively.

He slowly peels himself away from you, enough to look at your chest again. He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Gonna go see him?”

He looks up at your face warily.

You try to smile. It probably looks really fake but at least it’s an attempt, right?

“I probably could,” he replies. “Sollux says he’s in an institution.”

You raise your eyebrows. “What like a crazy house?”

“He didn’t go into details. He said we would talk about it when I get home.”

Oh right. He’s gone the day after tomorrow. Good thing you resolved all of this bullshit now instead of at the last minute. You would have regretted that for a long damn time.

“Not really digging the idea of you leaving,” you admit quietly. “And I have to work tomorrow, otherwise I’d take you out again and mooch alcohol off of your freaky lack of identity.”

He huffs out a small laugh. “I feel like there’s a lot we should have done instead of being fucking stupid about things.”

Aha.

There’s another thing that slipped your mind.

“Like what?” you press and grin down at him. You even waggle your eyebrows.

The atmosphere has gotten a lot more comfortable. So comfortable that Karkat pulls out of his surliness enough to smirk back, fisting the front of your shirt with both hands and rising onto his toes to whisper against your ear, “We can always try again.” If that isn’t bad enough, the tip of his nose traces your lobe and _everything_ starts to tingle. “I’m still mad at you and you owe me.”

Now we’re fucking talking.

You adjust your arms, sliding them down to around his waist, pulling him a little closer against you. “I guess I do,” you reply. “Hopefully I don’t get vertigo this time around, right?”

His own hands have also migrated, leaving your shirt and linking at the back of your neck. “That’s what we’re aiming for.”

“You gonna take care of me?” You say this teasingly.

“Of course.” He says this seriously.

“And you’ll still love me if I’m sick all over you?”

You say that seriously.

You both freeze at the same time and stare at each other like you just said something ridiculously taboo and neither of you were expecting it. Which, you guess, you kind of just did.

He presses his lips together and carefully removes your shades from your face, setting them aside on the dresser next to you. His hands return to you, sliding up into the hair at the back of your head this time, and you swear he’s leaving a trail of fucking fire because the tips of your ears are burning.

“Of course,” he repeats lowly, just before he pulls you down to him.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains male on male intimacy. there is your warning.
> 
> * * *

You’ve developed a habit over the years of leaping into things without giving them a whole lot of thought first. And, you know, it’s worked for you for the most part – you aren’t hurting anybody and if there are any consequences to come from it, they’re on you and you’ll deal with them. It’s not even really just you, it’s kind of a Strider thing – Bro doesn’t do it as often (he thinks more than you do to begin with) but he’s always told you that he can’t lose the spontaneity in his life or he’s gonna turn into one of those thirty-somethings that feel closer to fifty. 

You can relate to that. If you got anything remotely positive out of the Sburb mess, it was the ability to start grabbing life by the balls and to not over think or double-guess anything. You started to do that when Karkat first showed up, being fucking 50-50 on your feelings about him, until you realized that fighting attraction for someone is pointless. If you like ‘em, you like ‘em. It’s that simple, and there’s no reason to complicate it.

Something you should probably keep in mind for yourself, from now on.

You kept repeating the whole “not boyfriends” shtick to Jade over and over and you _still_ aren’t sure why. Probably you were just being immature and defensive and trying to steer her away from any misconceptions about your little _spat_ but, fuck, _what_ misconceptions? Neither of you have said the word yet, but it’s pretty damn clear that you’re feeling it, regardless.

You can tell that Karkat is trying to take the careful route with you but there’s been a breakthrough in your relationship and it’s really hard for you to hold back at this point, wobble blob déjà vu illness be damned.

Despite his efforts, you’re still getting your way. 

So far you’ve managed to get him onto the bed. You say ‘managed’ like he put up this huge fight but really it actually didn’t take much effort; he seemed a little hesitant at first but once you started moving forward, he complied without an argument. You’ve ended up side by side, experimenting with kissing again and actually progressing a little further than you did last time without much of a hitch, which is a damn good sign. Little bit of dizziness but nothing worth worrying over.

Every so often, you start to push at him a little too hard and he pulls away from you to mumble, “Slow down” but you kind of can’t help it, the longer you try to do the whole light, careful closed-mouth kissing thing your body just starts wanting to fucking _ravage_ him. It’s his fault for being hot. And also a surprisingly good kisser, what’s up with that?

You know he’s gonna break eventually because he’s probably been waiting for this since the fucking end of the game. You HAVE been trying to behave yourself to a certain extent but you just want more of this incredible dipshit, so much more that you’re starting to feel frustrated from the self-restraint. Your hands are restless, grabbing at the material of his shirt or sliding up into his hair, but when you accidentally lose that hold on control a little and slither one of them up under the shirt to feel along the warm plane of his lower back, that’s when _he_ breaks away, his breath hitching audibly.

His eyes open halfway to look at you.

“I’m fine,” you assure him before he can ask.

He’s wavering so hard between certain and uncertain. “Are you _positive_?”

“Super positive,” you breathe back, shifting, guiding him, and you guess that's all the confirmation he needs from you because this time he allows it, rolling onto his back and reorganizing the lower half of his body to get comfortable.

You kiss him for what seems like a long time like that and the kisses are a lot more intense now. You’re re-familiarizing yourself with how his mouth feels as it moves against yours, enjoying the feeling of both hands tightly fisting the back of your shirt, and finding yourself _extremely_ impressed with how well he seems to know you and your movements, how well he seems to be keeping up with you. 

Something small and fuzzy in the back of your head reminds you that he DOES know your movements, he CAN keep up with you, this may be your first time snogging him into the mattress but it’s not the first run for him. He’s done this before. He remembers it. 

As if to prove the point, he arches up and says your name against your mouth in this fucking husky almost-whisper and it hits you that this fucker remembers exactly what you like. 

He remembers everything that got a response out of you and everything that you’ve encouraged him to do, things you can’t draw to mind no matter how hard you’ve tried.

Ain’t that a fucking realization, right there.

He’s totally fine, totally confident and fully knowledgeable of what he’s doing and how to do it. 

He hasn’t been holding himself back this whole time for his own sake. 

He’s been holding himself back for _yours_.

And now you’re Feeling Things.

You are Feeling _a lot of fucking Things_.

You gather him against you the best you can like you’re trying to pull him straight into you, breaking from his lips and giving you both a chance to breathe a little while your mouth explores his jawline and his earlobes and his cheekbones and then down to his neck. You try to start slow but your speed quickly matches the surging urgency in your gut. You can’t stop yourself; you feel like you wouldn’t be able to survive if you pulled away from him right now. 

This is way more than you anticipated, way more than just making out with someone, you are being wholly and completely enveloped by him, sinking quickly into a cloud of emotional lust that’s hitting you WAY too fucking fast for you to be able to pick apart and analyze, not that you’d even try right now, not that you’d even want to try. His body is comfortable under yours, his hands electric as they slide under your shirt and creep up along the skin of your back and his deep, weighted breaths just next to your ear driving you into an almost sickening sort of haze that you want to say you’ve maybe experienced before, a memory at the very edge of your mind, looking for you just as hard as you’ve been looking for it.

What the fuck is happening to you?

You don’t even realize that your entire body is shaking.

“Dave,” he rasps, his hands cupping along your ribs and gently pushing. “Dave, wait. Stop.”

You pull back to look at him. Even your breath is trembling. Your bottom lip, too. Everything. You are _racked_ with tremors. Now that you aren’t distracted by trying to eat Karkat alive, it’s starting to freak you out.

He looks fucking beautiful with his hair all messy on your pillow and pink on his face and his nostrils flaring a little while he tries to steady his breathing. His eyes are murky and heavy, staring up at you with pointed seriousness. 

“Dave,” he says. His voice is like sandpaper and you love it because _you’re_ doing that to him. “Calm down.”

“Dunno what’s wrong,” you admit.

I can wager a guess,” he replies. “Just… breathe for a second.”

You do. You breathe hard through your nose, dipping your head a little, closing your eyes and counting down from ten. There’s no real dizziness, but this is almost worse because you can’t pinpoint it properly. You feel like you sort of have no control over your limbs.

You get to four when he speaks up again, “Maybe this is a bad idea.”

“No,” you instantly reply, shaking your head. “It’s not a bad idea, I… I just need to grind through it.”

“I think we should stop.”

“I said no,” you hiss back, cracking your eyes open to look at him. “Seriously, just let it pass.”

He’s frowning back up at you, his fingers still playing at your sides under your shirt. “We need to do this shit carefully,” he tells you; his voice is less lusty and more authoritative now. You can’t tell if you’re disappointed by it or more turned on. You can’t tell too much of anything at the moment. “We have no idea what this is actually doing to you.”

But you, you’re stubborn to begin with. A good 90% of your thought process right now is coming from your genitals and that makes the stubbornness more prominent. To hell with your personal health.

“Finally got you like this,” you say and force a smile. “You’re not slippin’ out of it that easy.”

His frown slips. It turns to obvious concern. Bastard was trying to play angry with you for show. You shouldn’t have expected anything different. “Dave…” he tries again, but his tone has softened.

“What,” you respond suggestively, biting down on the discomfort of your body going fucking wacky on you and trying not to show it as outwardly anymore. “You don’t want me anymore?”

He snaps back into a frown. “I did not say that.”

“Well?” you coax, leaning down again on still-unsteady arms, touching your nose to his.

It takes him a minute or so because you’re not the only stubborn motherfucker here, but you kinda wiggle your eyebrows at him and seeing you joking around, you guess, eases his worrying. He finally smiles, faintly and uneasily, and his hands move, sliding around to your mid and lower back. The contact on your skin helps a lot. 

You lean down a bit more to nuzzle just under his jaw with your nose and he draws in a long, slow breath, tilting his head, fingers kneading into you. Fuck this, man. If it’s gonna pass, it’s gonna have to fucking pass while you’re doing this, there is _nothing_ about stopping that is even remotely appealing right now. You just want him and you just want this, you don’t give a _fuck_ if your body is all up in fucking arms to protest right now.

You push through it and while things don’t necessarily get better, the tremors become easier to ignore with your attention diverted onto him. 

He doesn’t seem to have much more reservation left in him either because as you’re advancing, he’s steering further and further away from wanting to watch out for you and closer to wanting to continue for his own self-fulfilling reasons, just like you. Probably figures he’s waited too fucking long for this to happen again and really, if you’re gonna tell him that you’re fine he’s most likely going to listen to you rather than fight against it a million times over and over because like he said before, guy’s gotta get his.

You get to his lips again and this time when the dizziness starts, you’re sort of prepared for it and you fight the fuck through it, concentrating as hard as you can on what he’s doing with his hands, concentrating on hiking his shirt up and experimentally touching his chest, concentrating on the way it feels as he’s peeling your own shirt up like he want to get it off of you and you, obliging gladly because the cooler air feels nice on your back and his fingers feel even nicer sketching uneven patterns around your spine.

He finishes what you started and squirms out of his shirt after a few minutes, too, and the sensation of skin on skin when he comes back to you is fucking _amazing_. He’s warm and compact and while your interests generally tend to lean more toward curvier girls, you are _so okay_ with how small he actually is, it makes you wanna just gather him up against you and hold onto him like that for the rest of the night.

Except your arms kind of won’t let you. Since your right hand is busy playing touchy-feely all over Karkat’s torso, your left arm is taking a bulk of your weight and the joint in your elbow has moved on from shaking to twitching. You exhale your frustration against Karkat’s mouth and he pulls back, pushes at your shoulders.

God _damnit_.

“Jesus fuck, here,” he murmurs, pushing until you’re up on your knees over him, aroused and confused and shaking and this is the most pathetic you think you’ve ever been in your entire life. 

“Against the wall,” he says and that’s when it clicks that he’s giving you a shot at relaxing a little bit, isn’t he just the sweetest fucking guy in the entire world.

You’re more than willing to obey and you have to admit that sitting with your bare back along the cool wall and no pressure on your limbs feels a _hell_ of a lot better. The cherry on top is when Karkat crawls over you, situating himself in your lap with one leg on either side of you, his hands finding your jaw just under your ears and his lips lowering to continue what you’d so rudely interrupted.

In this position your lower halves are impossibly close. You’re already turned _way, way_ on and having his ass nudging along your crotch is like fucking torture. A few times you try really hard not to lose your control again because you kinda _like_ the torture, the build-up is really good and really satisfying in itself, but there comes a point when he shifts, probably just instinctually or to get a little more comfortable, and the friction the movement creates literally _drags_ the fucking groan out of you, your fingers all tightening their hold on his hips.

He responds, this soft, breathy noise along your tongue, and he starts to deliberately move this time, really slow, barely noticeable. You can't have that so you encourage him with your hands, calculatedly pushing and pulling at his hips until he gets the picture and you’ve suddenly opened a Pandora’s box, except it’s not a box, it’s a fucking Cave of Wonders, he just starts grinding down on you like all he was waiting for this whole time was for you to egg him on like that and shit, he probably was. You don’t feel much dizziness anymore and your arousal is doing a great job at masking the shivers as you buck up against him and the surprisingly fluid rhythm that he's working on you.

Your open consent must be sexy or something (as it damn well should be) because he makes this anxious noise in the back of his throat, straightening up and pulling you closer, enough to get his arms around your neck and his fingers into your hair and your face is nestled just against one of his collarbones and he smells perfect like soap and personal scent and hormones and you’re goddamn thankful that Jade had the foresight to go downstairs for awhile because you just want to _ruin_ him tonight, or let him ruin you, you don’t even _care_ anymore at this point, jesus fucking christ. He’s so attractive and pushing all of the right buttons so fucking expertly that you don’t know what to do with yourself other than continue rubbing up on him and running both of your hands along either side of his backbone.

You don’t even get halfway up his back when something happens again.

Can’t catch a break, can you?

It’s way different this time. This time it’s full-blown tunnel, straight-up, you have darkened edges around your vision and everything seems to be pulling away from you, getting further and further, dimmer and dimmer, until y--

_\--hands on his shoulderblades, feeling the inhumanly prominent valleys of each alien bone along his spine rippling between your fingers. You’re pulling at him insistently, trying to eliminate literally ANY gap of naked air between the two of you, and even though he LOOKS like he’s getting caught up in the moment he still has enough wits left about him to pull back, bare his fangs at you, snap at you to cut it out--_

\--ike a dream except you can still feel everything, from the pressure of his fingers getting caught in your hair to the burning pleasure blossoming all through the lower pa--

_\--trying to twist around your hand like a snake. You’ve never felt a sense of urgency with him like this before, not even when you finally fucked for the first time. Neither of you were facing death as immediately back then, and neither of you rea--_

\--ing to move your mouth and tell him that something’s wrong, your body’s doing The Thing again and this time your brain is deciding to leap into the party, double-whammy. But your limbs are sort of frozen where you had them before this whole thing started ha--

_\--dingy little out-of-the-way corner trying to find some fucking sense in one another before your entire world crumbles underneath your feet, because there might be nothing left of either of you save for a stain in Sburb’s guide next week, or in a few days, or even tomorrow--_

\--opped moving and has slowed his own pace down, his hands falling to your shoulders and creating distance between your bodies; your sudden stillness is probably a little confusing but his face isn’t confused when you finally figure out how to raise your eyes. You can barely see him, he seems so far away and blurry and distant and there are actually two of him right now but you think you can make out the--

_\--possibly get any deeper, his hold on you strong as he buries his face into the crook of your neck and growls, growls HARD, like it’s the only thing keeping it from escalating to a scream, his body rutting and twitching against yours and his back slick with sweat as you trace along those bumps of bones again, loving each and every one of them individually just as much as you love everything else abou--_

\--ave, come back. Hey. Can you hear me?”

The tunnel vision fades but your sight, only for a second, goes snowy like a broken television set. 

“Dave?”

Your ears are ringing. His voice sounds he’s talking underwater.

You try moving your mouth. “Wh…” Well, you _can_ move again. But everything feels too weak and tired to do much with. Mouth included.

“Dave, hey, look at me.”

You do. You look back up at him. He is no longer split in two. Your eyes are returning to normal.

You feel like you just got violently ill. You know the feeling. Light-headed and exhausted and sweaty but relieved that your body feels like it’s back in your control again.

Something wet and warm trickles down along your upper lip. You instinctively sniff and the smell and dull taste of copper immediately hits the back of your throat.

Karkat is watching you quietly, still straddling your lap, hands still on your shoulders. He’s gone pale again.

You sluggishly lift one of your hands and touch the wetness below your nose. You aren’t really surprised when you pull your fingers back and see blood.

Even when you’ve gone into the dizzy spells over the past week, you’ve never gotten anything like a bloody nose before. Just the spins. No blood. What are you supposed to fucking make of this? And what was with the lucid little cut scenes, there, were those supposed to be memories? Did you just actually manage to _remember_ something?

You feel too tired to even be properly confused.

You turn your fingers around and hold them up to Karkat. Your eyebrows lift questioningly.

Suddenly there’s a tissue in his hand, where did that come from. You didn’t even realize he’d moved in the first place. He pushes it against your raised palm and swallows. “I know.” 

“The hell was that,” you manage as you wipe your face clean. Your limbs are doing okay now but your hands are still shaking like a motherfucker.

You feel his grip fall from your shoulders. “Did you see anything?” he asks.

That answers absolutely nothing, cool.

“Yeah, I saw something.”

“What did you see, Dave?”

“Uhh…” You ball the tissue up into a closed fist and sniff again. Still tastes horrible. “Lots and lots of awesome sex in some dark corner of a hangar or something. That happened, right? To us? That was an Sburb memory, wasn’t it?”

“A hangar,” he repeats, his gaze trailing away from you like he’s thinking.

“...we were really serious, huh?”

“Yeah,” he replies, distractedly and softly.

“Why did that make my nose bleed? This isn’t a fucking anime or something, Karkat, my nose shouldn’t be bleeding and my brain shouldn’t be collapsing like that over a memory, right?”

Something clicks because his eyes move back to you.

“…yeah,” he says. “That was a memory.”

“So why am I bleeding? That only happens to Bro, and he remembers shit constantly but the blood only comes whenever something reminds him that he died.”

You stare at one another.

His silence is extremely suspicious.

Discomfort rises in your throat. Somehow it accentuates the taste of the blood.

“Karkat.”

The insinuation behind his silence is now scary. You don’t like what it’s suggesting at all.

“Dude,” you prompt again, but you raise your voice a little because he’s freaking you out. “What the fuck are you hiding from me now?”

“Calm down,” he snaps back.

“No, man. One minute we're on the road to happy sex-land and the next I lose my eyesight and my hearing and start getting Vietnam fucking flashbacks and now my nose is bleeding and my boner is gone. None of these things are normal. Don’t fucking tell me to calm down.”

He just frowns at you.

“No more secrets,” you tell him seriously, because the Gamzee thing pissed you off enough; this is just wigging you right the hell out. “I need to know if that was just because I unlocked a memory like a fucking Xbox achievement, or if it means something more.”

You plant your proverbial feet into the proverbial ground and brace yourself.

“Did I die in Sburb, yes or no.”

You really hope that his answer is worth not getting laid for.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long. I just started doing prop commissions and getting my crap together has been a little bit of a chore! I think we're like two chapters away from the end of the story? Something like that.
> 
> THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING KIDS.
> 
> * * *

_Is_ this worth not getting laid for?

You can’t really decide.

On one hand, you could probably flip this around and use your confusion and your shock and all the negativity that filled the room like fucking smoke in that instant as a sort of device, you know, like they do in the movies. Slow and dramatic buildup, devastating blow landed, the two subjects involved finding tension release and solace with one another in a pretty immediate and usually totally intense sex scene. Like using all the bad shit as a catalyst to figure out what _really_ matters in the moment.

Unfortunately life isn’t movies.

You _could_ flip it. Or try to. But the lifeless (pun accidental but you’ll take it where you can get it) way that Karkat explains the circumstances surrounding your last day in Sburb, like he’s robotically designed this entire conversation in his head on his own terms _just in case_ , really isn’t lending itself in nookie’s favour.

There isn’t even a grandiose story to back everything up, either. Shit went down, you were in the thick of it trying to live up to your knightly status and then some, you guess, and boom. Done. Over. You were being all fucking heroic for a change when it happened and that shit right there is what sealed it for you. Karkat was there when it happened. He watched. He tried to revive you multiple times until he was apparently forcefully dragged away from you and you really want to stick in a good old-fashioned necrophilia joke in there just to make things seem alright, but you guess there’s just some shit you really can’t make better.

Adding insult to injury, it wasn’t even Lord Swol Beefhead or the fucking seadwelling monsterqueen to hold the gun to your head, so to speak. Shit, there was no gun. That’d be too easy.

Because there’s one last kicker. One last Shyamalan twist.

You were done in by a juggling club.

Now ain’t.

That.

Fucking.

 _Something_.

You want to laugh. It’s too ironic. Way too fucking ironic. You wish you could think of something off the top of your head to beat the irony in this. This may just be the end-all be-all of crazy ironies in the Lives and Times of Dave Strider and it’s blowing your fucking mind. It just _figures_ that your shining moment, your leap to victory, your chance to finally fucking own up and be the hero that you’d been refusing to believe you could be through a majority of your time in Sburb… and you’re taken down by the goddamn juggalo.

You kind of wish you could laugh.

Or at the very LEAST be your normal flippant fucking self in response.

But really, the last thing you’re thinking about when Karkat finally stops talking is sweeping him into your arms and laying him down on a fucking bed of rose petals.

You’re more focused on being thankful for having arms to use at all. Jesus.

A strong silence follows his retelling and you’re glad for it. This is _kind of a lot_ to be slammed with in one sitting. You’re sort of regretting asking for it. While you’re not dead now and back to being alive and as well as you can be, it’s a little fucked up to imagine that once upon a fucking time your friends all got a front row seat to watch you bite it.

You have questions for him but you don’t really know how to ask them. They sound important in your head but you know the second you open your mouth you’re going to sound like the dumbass again.

You glance up from the hands in your lap – which you’ve been staring at for the past fucking twenty minutes or something now – to look at him. He’s spacing out a little, looking angrily worried as usual, watching a blank spot on the wall nearby, his eyes moving a little like his thoughts have physical manifestations that only he can see and follow.

Every time he thinks or talks about this, he lives through it again.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me before?” you finally ask, and he blinks, startled, like he forgot that you’re still in the room with him. He looks so sad and small huddled up the way he is, shielding himself from you with his legs pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them protectively. Like a little kid who just tattled on someone and feels really guilty about it.

“Is it because of memory?” you press. “Is anyone else’s memory even _actually_ a piece of shit like mine or is there some mass conspiracy to hide this from me because it sucks?”

“Nobody’s talked to me about it,” he replies stonily. “I’m assuming it’s the former.”

“You knew,” you say. “You remembered it. Why didn’t _you_ say anything?”

His dark eyebrows come together in the middle. “Say what exactly, Dave? Think of a good point where I could have interjected with a fucking bomb like that in any conversation or time together that we’ve had, so far.”

You actually do think about it for a second. You give up as soon as you realize that there really wasn’t any time when it would’ve been beneficial or appropriate for him to tell you something like this. You hate being wrong. So you just shut your mouth and stay quiet.

“See?” There’s no actual bite in his voice. “I’m not exactly having a great time with any of this either, you know.”

“I know,” you reply. “I know that. Sorry. I’m just…”

You’re just what?

A little shocked to realize that you’ve been dead like over a thousand times by this point but this is the one that’s hitting you the hardest?

A little annoyed that everyone seems to be on a Keep Shit From Dave kick these days?

A little fucking pissed off that you are being constantly fucking interrupted by some probably dangerous bodily reaction every single time you finally almost manage to get some ass?

The opportunities to finish that thought are endless, friends.

You breathe out, long and loud.

“I think I need to like. Be alone for a little bit,” you tell him.

He doesn’t even try to stop you, smart kid. Just nods and mumbles, “Okay.”

You slowly stand up, pick your shirt up off the floor and put it back on. You grab your shades from the nightstand.

He’s watching you.

You sort of hate to leave him on this note. Shit was getting so good before this happened. Shame to have to give up on it for the time being. But hey, he can’t expect you to be ready and raring to go again after hearing something that just kind of makes you feel like a fucking zombie.

“I’ll come back later,” you say, not even really 100% certain if you mean it or not.

“Alright,” he replies, not sounding so sure, himself.

 

\- - -

 

It’s just your luck that Bro’s door happens to be open when you approach his room.

You guys did a lot of talking back when you first woke up. Neither of you are particularly good at it, so more than anything there was a lot of shrugging and awkward back-of-neck-rubbing and cutting off thoughts and getting frustrated at your joined ability to actually form a proper goddamn sentence when you’re feeling too much. It was totally okay. You understood each other and that’s really what mattered.

You’ve agreed to sort of disregard the time-bendy vortex that Sburb sucked you into because it’s just way too complicated and normal life outside of the game is a cake-walk in comparison. At one point, somehow, YOU were HIS big brother. There were timelines that got all weird and intermingled and shot to hell. Sburb reset him as Bro, though, not the younger d-bag in the fluffy pink shorts, and that was ideal for you. You don’t know what you would have done if it reset him to be younger than you. You, as you are now, aren’t fit to be anyone’s back-up father figure. You’d probably be all sorts of fucked up right now, and fucking HIM up in the process.

He’s sitting at his desk, tinkering on something, with his back toward the door. He’s retained a LOT of his former self, so it’s barely a surprise to you when he notices your presence without even turning around. Shit, you barely even come within a foot of the outside of his threshold when he speaks up.

“What’s up, my man?”

It doesn’t surprise you, no. But his ability to do that kind of shit will always fascinate you regardless.

You wander in and linger behind him and suddenly feel strange, trying to think of what you hoped to accomplish by coming to speak to him. You must be quiet for too long because he stops moving and cranes his neck to look at you over his shoulder expectantly.

You gesture vaguely toward the sliding door at the opposite end of the room that leads to his balcony. Lucky bastard only got one of the best rooms in the mansion because he and Roxy go way the fuck back. You will likely never stop being childishly bitter about not getting a balcony. “Can we go outside or something?”

He doesn’t ask because he doesn’t have to. He recalls just as well as you do that all of your best heart-to-hearts, as stilted and neanderthalic as they tended to be, were done on the roof of your old building in Texas. Something about being outside, feeling and smelling the air and having something wider and more vast to look at than just a wall, made it a little easier for you to open up with each other. It’s not a tradition that either one of you are willing to let go of.

He wordlessly puts whatever the fuck he’s doing down and leads you over to the balcony door.

Once you’re outside, both leaning on the balcony railing, you try to think of how to say what you need to, or what to even say in the first place. Fortunately silence is rarely ever uncomfortable between the two of you and you use it to get your thoughts in order.

“Theoretically,” you finally say slowly. It prompts him to turn his head a little and look at you. “If you just got told something that used to be like, super devastating and important a long time ago but doesn’t really affect your life anymore, how would you get over being shocked by it?”

He raises an eyebrow, almost unnoticeably. “Theoretically?”

“Yeah, theoretically.”

You can tell he’s skeptical. It’s in the way he just watches you for a minute.

“ _Theoretically_ ,” he says, humouring you for the time being. “Prob’ly just take time to myself and let it sink in. No need to drag other people into it. It’s my shit, not theirs.”

“What if everyone else knew about it and kept it from you for awhile?”

“Don’t matter,” he says. “How you deal with your problems is how _you_ deal with your problems.”

This has, so far, not been earthshatteringly helpful.

“Even if you feel like being alone and thinking about it too much might actually drive you crazy?”

His jaw tightens a little. It’s not an angry thing for him necessarily but it can mean annoyance. He’s not a huge fan of beating around bushes for too long.

“Is this about Jake or something?” he asks you bluntly and that’s exactly when you realize that he has every right to ask because the way you’re phrasing your questions is _kinda_ leading in that direction.

“Oh, no, dude, jesus no,” you backpedal instantly.

“Then what’re you asking me, here?”

You figure there’s really no point in irritating him by being flighty. If he’s gonna have any shot at all, even the smallest one, at helping you out, he’s gonna need you to be honest.

“How did it feel,” you try again. “When you remembered that you died in Sburb?”

His eyebrow lifts again and this time it’s definitely noticeable. “Assuming we’re not bein’ theoretical anymore.”

You press your lips together and shake your head a little.

He exhales audibly and you watch his gloved hands lace together in front of him, dangling over the balcony railing. “Hard to explain,” he admits.

“I know.”

“In my case, it’s a little fucked up ‘ccounta remembering dying and then bein’ respawned in a different timeline after the fact. So when I woke up when the game was over, I felt cheated, you know? Like I got life robbed clear from me twice.”

He’s speaking carefully. He’s probably trained himself not to think too hard about it, even when he’s being asked to. Because of the nosebleeds. Which you can unfortunately relate to now.

“On the other hand, though,” he continues. “I woke up and I was alive again. Alive for real, instead of feeling like some random bread slice of myself. Get what I mean?”

“Yeah,” you say. “You were a normal guy, not an alternate timeline version of yourself, right?”

“Exactly that.”

You can also relate to that. It’s pretty nice being _you_ , singular, as a solo person. Not one of hundreds.

“Why are you so curious out of nowhere?” he asks you. “Did something happen?”

Now, you know better than to blatantly keep things from Bro, _especially_ when you’ve officially piqued his curiosity and he’s already on to you, anyway. You know he’d never actually do anything to damage you or anything, but even with that knowledge he’s an intimidating motherfucker and he knows how to make you squeal like a pig.

‘Cept you ain’t no pig and there won’t be any squealing. The easiest way to talk to Bro is with total honesty.

“Yeah,” you say back. “I learned a thing about Sburb.”

He stares you down for a minute, his face frustratingly blank. When you’re faced with him doing that, you can kinda start seeing why Karkat gets so punchy when it’s coming from you.

“Apparently I died?”

Bro’s jaw clenches again. “At the end?”

You shrug. “Or towards it, something like that.”

“Do you remember any of it?”

“I _didn’t_ until like, twenty minutes ago.” You smirk, mostly against your own will. “Got one of your patented wimpy dribbly nosebleeds in the process.”

He slowly changes his stance, turning so that his elbow is on the railing, now, and he’s almost full-on facing you. “What triggered it?”

Well.

How do you.

Explain this to your brother, exactly.

Keep it loosey-goosy. That’s how. “It just sort of happened. I was with Karkat at the time so it was probably something he did to jar a memory or whatever.”

Sounds legit, right?

Bro hums and continues to stare at you.

“I don’t get it, though,” you go on to keep him from a) staring without speaking for too long because that shit is so unnerving and b) prodding for more information. “Why is this all happening _now_?”

“Ain’t that obvious enough?” Bro responds. “It’s all him, kid.”

You press your lips together.

“I don’t like thinking about that,” you eventually say glumly.

Bro says “Ehh.” and lazily waves one of his hands dismissively. “Sounds a lot more dooming than it actually is.”

You don’t know why you’re getting your hopes up, but… “So… it goes away eventually, right?”

He smirks. You have mixed feelings on when he does that.

“Nah,” he says. “Not completely.”

Not the answer you wanted.

“It gets manageable,” he clarifies. “Hell, might be even faster for you since you’re around him all the time. Most of the stuff that gets _my_ head crazy is gone now, so when it hits me, it hits me good.”

You feel like you might actually be successfully putting shit together, here.

“You’re saying more exposure means fewer episodes.”

He half-shrugs, sort of nods; Bro is the only person who can pull off looking totally clueless about something even when he’s a thousand percent positive about it. “Or episodes that aren’t so severe. But yeah. That’s basically what I’m saying.”

You feel stupid. If you’d just stuck around and kept doing what you were doing, you probably would have been fine after a few minutes. But no, you pulled a typical fucking Dave and flashstepped away from your problems instead of planting your feet and dealing with them, because it’s easier to turn your back on things that make you uncomfortable. There’s instant gratification in it. Out of sight, out of mind.

“I keep making mistakes,” you say aloud, more for your own benefit than Bro’s, but you know it catches him by surprise anyway because BOTH eyebrows do the thing this time and the corner of his mouth twitches.

“Then go fix them,” he tells you like you’re a fucking idiot.

He makes it sound real simple.

Technically it IS simple. All you have to do is waltz back into the guest room and resume your personal business with Karkat and stubbornly ignore the fact that you can’t shake the slight sting of betrayal persistently gnawing at you. You guess you’re not as good at shrugging shit off as you used to be. Too bad it took Karkat coming to find you again to fully push that home, huh? Must be what Adult-ing is like.

Nineteen going on forty.

“Seriously,” he emphasizes dryly, because you haven’t answered him yet. He leans forward a little and peers at you over the top of his shitty, stupid shades and you can tell how serious he is because his eye contact is solid. “You should know by now that petty shit don’t matter anymore. Neither does bein’ selfish and only thinking about ourselves. Not to people like us. Go fix them.”

You try to wonder if giving it one more night would be a smart idea – to clear your head, to drop the dumb sensitive bullshit before you go back to him, that sort of thing – but that seems a little stupid when you realize that he’s had this entire trip to figure things out with you and has done so with actual success on his end and you’re the one who just can’t seem to grasp the idea of just _letting shit go_. YOU are being the roadblock. You keep hitting a wall but you ARE the motherfucking wall. There is no victim card to play because there _is no victim_. You just like to try when you’re feeling sorry for yourself.

Sure, you died. Yeah, that’s crazy and hard to wrap your head around. In a weird way, though, you sort of got off scot-free because you’re not traumatized by it. You didn’t LIVE it.

But Karkat did.

And you’ve been the asshole agonizing over things this whole time while he’s been patiently waiting for you to get over it.

And you realize that you should talk to Bro more often when you feel like garbage, because he’s _right_. The most helpful fucking thing that you can do right now is exactly what he told you to do: go fix the mistakes.

Of course he’s right. You’ll never admit it to his face because it’ll either inflate an ego that he HAS to have stuffed down in his chest cavity full of old anime VHS tapes and Hawaiian pizzas somewhere, or it’ll make the both of you way too emotional. But you’d never expect anything less from a talk with him.

He’s _always_ fucking right.

Unfortunately how right he is doesn't change the fact that once you quietly take his advice out of the room with you back to the guest room, Karkat isn't in there. And neither are his things.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait y'all. 
> 
> I got my first big prop showcasing event coming up in LA this weekend and I'm getting some commissions done (still shamelessly pimping myself out, here, if anyone needs cosplay stuff, shoot me a message on tumblr; bbbbangarang) but somehow I managed to pump a chapter out.
> 
> This is the second to last chapter of Improvidence, ever, period. Surreal, man.
> 
> * * *

Good thing for you, you don’t give him time to get very far.

The house is fucking huge so the first thing you do is try to call him. You do it three times and each time, it rings once before going to voicemail. 

You don’t want to alarm anyone else just yet so before you go breaking down everyone’s doors and demanding that the search dogs be let out into the night, you attempt to remain as calm as you can and settle for going to everyone’s rooms individually and putting your ear against their doors to listen for any talking. Karkat’s voice is pretty distinct, even when he’s speaking quietly.

But you wind up with nada. Jade has some TV show going, and nothing but silence comes back from Rose and John’s rooms. You don’t even know if John’s home right now.

That’s two steps down. Step three is to actually drag yourself downstairs and investigate the lower half of the premises. 

Maybe that should have been step one.

Shut the hell up, you’re trying not to panic here.

And you successfully ward it off, but to be totally honest when you hit the top of the staircase and you see him at the bottom, standing by the door with his big bag next to his feet and backpack hanging off of his shoulder, swiping away on his damn phone like he’s killing time at a fucking bus stop, it’s essentially impossible to keep the anger at bay, too. Especially when you imagine him purposely tapping the ‘decline’ button for all of your calls a few minutes ago.

Of course you’re fucking angry; why shouldn’t you be? You’ve been putting up with a lot of bullshit since this kid appeared back on your radar and sure, you get that he has his own dumptruck load of bullshit to work with. You’ve been as understanding as you are capable of being in a situation like this but he’s gotta understand that _you_ got some bullshit too, right?

You’re probably giving yourself brain damage every time you see something familiar or come into direct contact with him for more than a few minutes, and you just found out that you came back from the dead, actually and fucking _legitimately_ rose from the _literal_ dead, during the restart. Now the little fucker’s trying to skip out on you? 

No, bitch.

You can feel your fucking hands clenching into fists and you’re trying to keep your cool, you _really_ are, but you feel cheated and wronged and _frustrated_ because you’ve been trying to get over your own commitment-phobic issues and seriously work on this with him, despite all the head-trippy nonsense, and you’re suddenly and unexpectedly not getting the same amount of effort back. God fucking forbid you let your brain convince you that it’s because you care more than he does, you know that’s not the case but that shit will just _mess_ with you.

You take one step down and the stair that your foot lands on – that one stair, the creaky one that you usually instinctively skip, every goddamn staircase has A Creaky Step – groans really loudly under your weight.

Karkat whips his head around and stares up at you. You stop advancing entirely.

After a minute of neither of you moving, you withdraw your foot from the Creaky Step and resume your admittedly enjoyable position towering over him at the top of the stairs.

“The fuck you think you’re going?” you ask him. Maybe you add a bit more bite to your voice than you intended to but you’re masking some really severely hurt feelings and you’ll be fucked if you showcase that weakness on open display for this cowardly douche-canoe. Not after pulling this stunt, especially.

“Dave,” he says, lowering his phone like he’s forfeiting something. “Just… don’t, okay?”

You scoff loudly and the sound is amplified by the tunnel of the staircase. “I can’t actually believe that you're telling me to ‘don’t’ right now. ‘Don’t’ _what_? Your explanation better be as hilariously entertaining as I’m imagining it’s gotta be.”

“Am I the only one between the two of us seeing that this just isn’t working?” he snaps back.

“At first, you weren’t,” you respond. “But now, actually, yeah. You are.”

He shuts his damn mouth like you knew he would.

“What I’d like to know,” you go on. “is where you get off thinking that the best way to deal with what freaks you out is to run away like a scared little baby without warning or telling anyone.”

“I was going to tell you—“

You cut him right the fuck off because that’s not the right answer. “When, halfway back to the fucking boonies? Gonna text me all, hey, sorry Dave, left early, but see you around? Are you _kidding_ me?”

“ _No_ , you asshole, I was going—“ He cuts HIMSELF off this time. He falters. He continues his thought but it’s definitely lacking the conviction that it had a second ago. “…I was going to call you in the cab.”

You squint down at him. “Yeah, my bad, that’s _totally_ a way better method of telling someone who’s investing in you that you’re giving up on them.”

“Maybe that wasn’t the best idea,” he admits, but his voice is still hard. No surrender there. “But honestly the best solution that came to mind after that episode was to remove the problem from the situation. Being me.”

“Is this like some actual ‘for your own good’ bullshit?”

“I’m obviously not doing you any good by being here,” he presses. “If contact or interaction with me is just going to fuck with your physical health, I’d rather put distance between us.”

And you thought your feelings were banged up before, damn. Kid sure knows how to pack a fucking punch without even really meaning to.

“So you’d rather give up whatever progress we’ve been making because you’re afraid you’re, like, what, hurting me too much? Is that it?” You think you know what that answer’s gonna be but you sort of need to hear it regardless.

“I didn’t come here with the intention of making you remember _death_ , Dave,” he says. “I didn’t know it would go this far, or affect you this strongly, and the thought of just fucking continuing to do it anyway doesn’t really sit right with me.”

“Karkat,” you tell him calmly. “You’re being a giant penis right now.”

“I am not being a giant penis,” he says defensively, and he sounds so butthurt over being called a penis that you have to _forcefully bite back_ the urge to laugh. Now is not the time to laugh. Now is the time to be livid at him for a really good reason. Get it together, Strider.

“You ARE,” you push. “You’re making all of these decisions on my behalf all of a sudden, you’re not even giving me a shot at voicing my own opinion. And then you’re gonna go and pull the wiener-card and be all ‘oooh, I’m the knight in shining fucking armour, I’m going to disappear forever so I don’t hurt anyone anymore’? _No_ , dude.”

He’s glaring at you now, because you’re finding all the tiny chinks in aforementioned armour and you’re blasting them clean-wide fucking open. “You’re grossly fucking exaggerating,” he all but snarls out at you. His voice is raising a little, getting sharp and raspy. You’ve missed that tone of his tremendously, even when it’s lacking the almost-inhuman scratchiness of his troll voice. “And YOU were the one who walked the fuck out of the room back there, so stop acting like you’re the only one with the right to be upset.”

It’s a desperate grab at something, you know it is. But it still offends you, you can’t lie about that. “I walked out because I _needed to breathe_ , man, what the hell is wrong with you? Not only did I almost pass the fuck out by taking shit too damn quickly, but then you dropped the zombie-bomb on me.”

His shoulders slump a little. “I- yeah. Okay. I get that. But why do YOU get to defend yourself for taking a step back and I’m suddenly the villain for trying to basically do the same thing?”

Really?

“I know you’re not that stupid, Karkat, you’re WAY smarter than this. There’s a massive difference between taking a breather and leaving the premises entirely. I don’t wanna fucking judge you for feeling like you’re doing nothing but giving someone trouble, but at LEAST have the cahones to recognize when someone calls you out on your overdramatic emo bullshit, won’t you?”

He bares his teeth a little and kinda scoffs through them – old habit, you figure, much less intimidating with slightly crooked, normal human teeth in place of a garbage disposal. “You’re calling the fact that I’m looking out for your well being ‘overdramatic emo bullshit’? Give me more fucking credit than that, Strider, what the fuck.”

“I’ve been giving you credit since you showed up,” you bite back. “Not to toot my own fucking horn here, Karkat, but I don’t think I could be any more patient or understanding with someone if I even tried. You got a rare service from me here, bro, and it’s looking to me that the fucking novelty ran out for you, so now you’re abandoning the situation and passing it off as —“ Air-quotes here, naturally. “—‘for my well being’.”

That makes him mad. 

“Wow, Dave, that’s a great observation with literally no fucking backing to it whatsoever! I especially love the part where you said that you’re giving me all the goddamn credit in the whole wide world and then _immediately_ contradicted yourself and giving me dick. Bravo!”

“That ain’t like you,” you say. “To pull the fucking aggressively-defensive victim card so easily and so quickly. What’s the matter, man? Did I strike a nerve? Did I tap the selfishness of the situation _just_ hard enough?”

“Be honest, did you really catch up with me just to insult me into the floor? _Seriously_?” 

“Of fucking course not, I came here to stop you from leaving. Even if your intentions are harmless you’re still not being fair, dude. Did you even bother thinking that maybe I _don’t give a damn_ if I’m going through all of this in order to work on shit with you? Did that even enter the realm of possibility for you?”

“Why the _fuck_ would you want to potentially deal with this sort of thing if you had the option NOT to?”

“Because I _love_ you, you idiot, jesus fucking christ!”

And there it is.

Just like that.

It slides out so easily you’d swear you’re doing something as simple as telling him the time.

The rage that has been collecting across his face instantly dies away. His features go slack, his eyes wide and suddenly completely lost.

Honestly, you’re just as surprised as he seems to be.

You guess, if it came to you so fluidly it’s probably been brewing for awhile, just waiting for that one boiling point to finally fucking spill out, but you’re kind of thrown off that you hadn’t been planning it. Then again, you’ve never really thought that the big ‘L’ confession is _supposed_ to be all extravagantly dressed up and prepared for ahead of time. You think that the best time to say it is when it means the most, when the moment naturally perfectly calls for it, and that’s not really something you can chalk up to foresight.

He’s staring at you like he’s expecting an explanation but you don’t really have one. 

“What’s the big deal,” you grumble because you don’t want to be embarrassed but you are, that wasn’t exactly how you were expecting it to go down. “Can you blame me, we’ve been through two fucking lifetimes together at this point, jesus.”

He just… keeps staring at you.

“Dude, don’t get starry-eyed. No need to make it this huge deal. I just felt like you needed to know why you trying to leave right now is so monumentally fucked up for me.”

He shifts his eyes, looking somewhere toward the middle of the stairs. This gives you a nice, quiet moment to reflect on _just how much_ you'd like to melt into an unfeeling puddle of human-goo and not have to deal with any backlash that might be brimming just below Karkat’s surface. 

The nice, quiet moment stretches itself into an awkward, uncomfortable standstill. You want to tell him to say something but you also just told him not to make a big deal so you’ll sort of sound like a huge hypocrite.

Instead, you say, “Don’t leave.”

…that wasn’t much better, was it?

It gets his attention, at least, and he lifts his head again to look back at you.

You meet his eyes and it’s all fucking over for you. Gravity takes advantage of the despicably vulnerable position you’ve just put yourself in, and you feel heavy. You want to sit down but you’re afraid it’ll make you feel too much like you’re giving up right along with him.

“Don’t,” you repeat. “Especially for such a stupid reason. We got this far, right? We can’t just fucking… stop. So what if I get dizzy? So what if I get these reactions? They’re only gonna get better, it’ll go away eventually. And I can fucking handle it if. You know. If we can just actually be together. Or whatever.”

Both of his eyebrows rise. “It goes away?”

“I walked away from you so I could talk to Bro,” you say. “He’s gone through this shit ‘cause he died in Sburb. That’s what he told me. The more you’re exposed, the less you’ll be affected. You adapt or something, I guess it makes sense.”

He slides his backpack off of his shoulder and lets it thump to the floor. "...it goes away," he repeats, but this time it isn't a question for you, it's more like a revelation for himself. You know he's realizing here, of course it fucking goes away, because all of HIS weird episodes stopped years ago.

Little puzzle pieces are just clicking together left and right.

He takes in a deep, audible breath and moves forward to start up the stairs, real real slow, only ascending a couple of steps before stopping again.

“Say it again,” he says, and his face is dead serious. His voice is low and soft now, sort of thrumming. Despite the fact that you were ready to punch him in the teeth less than three minutes ago, half of the blood in your body heads straight down. You’re the worst.

“You want me to say the whole thing again verbatim?”

The corners of his lips twitch up. He moves up a few more steps. “Could do without the ‘fucking idiot’ part.”

“Never satisfied, are you?”

He’s steadily advancing again, his hand ghosting along the railing. “I’m _easily_ satisfied,” he corrects. “You just don’t know how to talk to people.”

It’d be insulting if he said it minutes earlier. There’s a shift in his tone that clearly denotes that he’s not taking legitimate jabs at you and _you’re_ struggling not to smile back all of a sudden because the momentum has changed and you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t the least bit relieving.

“You can be such a big baby,” you tell him resolutely, holding eye contact. “and you’re too sensitive. You’re a _real_ bastard when things don’t go your way and you take things way too fucking personally. But you’re probably never gonna find someone who puts up with your shit the way I do, and you’re DEFINITELY never gonna find someone who’ll do it in two completely different lifetimes. You need to not leave today, and stay the hell here, so we can get past the hard stuff as fast as we can and move on to the good stuff.”

“Yeah,” he agrees softly, coming to a halt on the step just below yours – it creaks really fucking loudly and it should be HILARIOUS but you both settle for brief, breathy chuckles because you’re way too stuck on each other to be interrupted right now. Your position brings your height differences to an even further extreme. You still love being the one looking down at him; he may talk big, but you’ve still got something over him. Literally.

The timing and the atmosphere are just too perfect and you’re unable to keep from doing The Thing. You drop your Cool Kid pretenses, lift your hands, hold both side of his face in them and tell him, “I love you and your oversensitivity and your whining and your unnecessary anger, and your insulting, acidic tongue and the way you call me a douchebag and how I can’t insult you back without you potentially flying off the goddamn handle and making it all about you.”

His eyes are flicking back and forth between yours. His cheeks are burning hot against your palms.

“You walk out that door today and you’re breaking someone’s heart, you fucker. So don’t do it.” 

“I still have to leave tomorrow,” he says, and he sounds helpless like you just karate-chopped him in the throat.

“I’ve been _prepared_ for that. That’s the difference. I’m not ready to say goodbye to you today. We still have the night to work things out.” You grin. “All night, if we have to.”

You FEEL the stress in his jaw muscles relax. He probably isn’t realizing at all that his eyelids are beginning to droop a little, but it’s killing you in a million fucking different ways. 

“All night, huh?” he asks in this stupid, distant voice as he flushes his pride straight down the toilet because fuck it, while you’re being honest with one another he may as well show you _just_ what kind of hold you have over him, right?

“Here I am,” you say. “confessing this big dumb important thing to you and all you can hone in on is getting boned.”

His eyes sharpen again and the tension in his jawline returns under your fingers. “Shut the hell up,” he says. “You don’t understand how long I’ve been waiting for it so you don’t get to make any smartass comments.”

“No, dude, I totally get it. You’re taking a big risk jumping into that with me considering it’s kind of a weird, ass-backwards form of necrophilia, but hey, if you wanna try and jump into bed with one of the undead I guess that’s your prerogative, I ain’t gonna try and—“

You’re cut off when he snakes a hand around the back of your neck and drags you down into a firm, forceful kiss.

His way of saying ‘You talk too fucking much’, you guess.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nah this ain't an April Fool's joke. we are officially done with the Improvidence series.
> 
> a lot has happened in my life since my last update, mostly good stuff that needed to take a front row seat with my priorities. I'm sorry for taking so long in submitting the final chapter, and I'm really appreciative of your support and patience and silly tumblr messages.
> 
> before we move on, I'd like to share something - fellow Archiver **theaxisofidiocy** recorded a podfic for the first chapter of Dark Corners, Sharp Angles and I'm STOKED because hearing my story read aloud is super cool. Go check it out!: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2467328/chapters/5470988  
>  thank you and keep it up; I'd love to hear more!
> 
> secondly, I love stuff like this and fanart and just random hellos so feel free to reach out whenever on my tumblr: bbbbangarang. getting messages about this story is like, the biggest highlight of my day.
> 
> third, yes, I'm still planning another DaveKat story. can't tell you when I'm going to officially start it, but it's on the horizon. :)
> 
> finally, thank you to my lovely wife ( **thesylphofmind** ) for being my unofficial beta, and to everyone who reads, critiques, comments and leaves kudos. you guys are all so awesome for keeping this story alive and I had just as much fun reading your reactions as I did writing it in the first place!
> 
>  **OBLIGATORY WARNING:** like 70 percent of this chapter contains male-on-male (unprotected) sex. please proceed accordingly.
> 
> * * *

Maybe you’ve been taking this whole thing at the wrong angle all along. 

You’re pretty damn close to perfect but hey, you’ve misjudged stuff before. Crazy, right?

But you’re thinking about it and maybe you _have_ to barrel through what’s happening to you, like if you linger in the moment a little too long, you’re essentially inviting the sensations to overwhelm and incapacitate you. Sexual stuff especially, you think, is probably a lot better when it comes completely unplanned and without expectations, anyway. No precautions, no talking about it first, just nutting up and going for it. If that’s what he chooses, if this is the direction he wants the two of you to go in, you’re going to do your best to quit having any sort of hesitation over how your body and your brain might react to it and aim to just bull-rush into it, best you can.

That’s what you’ve been wondering since your last bad trip, but it didn’t have a real reason to be amplified until now since your Spidey senses are telling you that this is most likely gonna be the worst that you’ll feel it to date. You’d like to say that you dredged up The L Word to get a little bit of nookie out of him like some kinda OG pimp but A., you’re not that deceptive. Or clever. And B., let’s be fucking honest, you wouldn’t have needed The L Word to get laid at this point. Karkat’s been waiting with an almost suspicious amount of patience for your green light, regardless of WHAT word might’ve been attached to it at the time.

It is a capital ‘E’ Experience, how quickly everything starts falling into place and progressing. You suppose, even with the knowledge that tonight ain’t gonna be ending on just a few nice tongue-kisses, that you took the right route by attempting to clear your mind of anything and everything having to do with reservations over your body’s reactions – you have no idea what to expect and of course that makes you nervous, but you rationalize it away by telling yourself that even if everything falls to pieces, even if your brain is fucking short-circuited in the long run by everything you’re putting it through, you’re in good company. _Safe_ company. The guy’s already done enough to prove that he’s not just out to get his own rocks off and leave. He’s been looking out for you this whole time without ONCE losing full composure or getting too stressed out and _man_ is that ever fucking relieving.

You have no recollection of stumbling back to your room or how you managed to do it without hurting yourselves or making enough of a scene to get caught in the act. You can’t remember pushing through the door, closing it behind you, and tumbling onto your bed. Seems to be a real fucking inconvenient habit for you, forgetting important shit, but you guess it’s not really AS important as what’s going on in the moment. Especially THIS moment.

You have even less recollection of getting all of your clothing completely off and haphazardly thrown across the room or dropped over the side of the bed, but that’s okay because you are _on_ each other, your bodies deciding on a unanimous ‘to hell with it’ vote as far as the predictable shyness or wariness of being completely nude and exposed in front of one another is concerned, and embracing the fact that this is happening by crushing together, voiding any space between, leaving only the sweetest fucking friction of skin against skin. You love every second of it, despite how Wacky Deli it’s threatening to make your momentum, but surprisingly you get the feeling that Karkat’s somehow liking it even more because he is _groaning_ into your mouth and shifting underneath you like he can’t get comfortable.

Then he digs _hard_ into your shoulderblades with the tips of his printless fingers and suddenly your brain is panicking like it’s felt this EXACT scenario before and it wants the memory of where and when it was presented to it perfectly preserved down to the last detail, but you’re determined not to get distracted or mislead because this is the farthest you’ve gotten with him so far, and you’re not fucking stopping here. Instead of collapsing like some scared, spineless jellyfish, you inhale deeply, do your best to push the discomfort aside, and distract yourself by re-adjusting how your bodies are aligned and making sure that he can tell, without any shred of doubt whatsoever, that you are one-hundred and ten percent fucking for this.

You find yourself situating between his legs to help with the friction and maybe it helps a little TOO much because he’s suddenly holding your hips still only a few seconds into it and breathing against your ear hot and hard. You have never been this fucking turned on before in your life, at least not as far as you can remember, and your world is spinning and shifting like it’s about to fall right the fuck into a gigantic black hole of nothingness if you don’t pull yourself together a little.

“Too much?” you ask him, barely recognizing your own voice around all of the strain you’re putting your body through, and you feel his hands tighten where they rest a little.

Somehow, you know what he’s gonna ask for before he even does.

“Condom?” he breathes and you exhale loudly against the crook of his neck.

It’s so robotic and instinctual that it’s almost cute. 

“Do we really need one?” Because even if it _is_ almost cute, you just want to be _in_ him already, not worrying about any incoming bodily or mental hardballs out of fucking nowhere. “We’re both clean.”

“Dave,” he says firmly, almost growls it, and you imagine he’s grouchy because he’s just as turned on as you are and wants to get down and dirty but he’s got these strict, textbook conceptions about sex and wants to resolutely hold the fuck onto them.

God love him for the precautious extension but you have no idea why he’s fucking bothering about safety when you’re both first-timers (you came close a few times but never sealed the deal, this is a no judgment zone) and would know if you had anything potentially dangerous to spread around at this point.

“I ain’t diseased,” you tell him and maybe you sound a little grumpy but you don’t really mean to, it just kinda comes out that way because whenever you open your eyes you’re seeing double and you’re doing that thing you were worried about in the beginning, lingering in the moment too long and letting the monster catch up to you. You _don’t_ want this to fuck anything up again.

You shut your eyes tightly and push your mouth against his collarbone.

“The longer we just lay here not doing anything,” you say. “The worse it feels. I need to keep moving.”

He’s still a little hesitant, you can feel it in the way he’s continuing to hold on to you and in how tense he is, but he obviously doesn’t want you to feel like shit so he finally concedes, melting against your bed, winding his hands around to the small of your back and pulling your body forward into his again.

 _Jesus_ it feels good.

You let it be known to him, too, like giving him a treat for doing something right – you shudder and moan and brace yourself to start grinding up on him all over again. You can tell he’s swiftly getting over whatever weird reservations he had a few seconds ago by the way his nails press into you and the noise he makes, that raspy, breathy fucking noise, absolute music to your ears.  

Before you feel like you should maybe consider putting any effort into further foreplay, just to see if you can poke the fucking bear a little harder without hurting yourself again, he’s roughly pushing at you so you have no choice but to wonder what the hell he’s fucking doing and pull away because jesus he JUST started getting things going again, you’re not a fucking yo-yo. Your distance gives him room to half-wiggle out from under you, yank your side-drawer open and start rummaging through it like he owns it, the asshole.

“Really bent on that condom, aren’t you,” you grumble, grumpy again because all of the interruptions are really cramping your style, here. You only have so much time to idle around before The Spins swing back around to slap you upside the fucking head again.

“ _Shh_ ,” he hisses back at you harshly, which does not help.

“You aren’t gonna find any in there,” you press irritably.

“Shut up,” he snaps, his rummaging growing a little more frantic. “I’m looking for lubricant, jackass.”

You are realizing kind of belatedly and out of nowhere that Karkat knows what the fuck he’s talking about and that it’s kind of really sexy and weird.

“I have hand cream,” you offer him.

He scoffs lightly, movements halting, looking up at you with his hair all sloppy and his face all red and patchy and his eyes half-lidded with this mixture of lust and mind-numbing annoyance and fucking god he’s gorgeous, what the hell. “Seriously?”

“I’ve been a single dude for a long time, Karkat, I don’t have a secret stash of supersized ultra-lube to slick up big rubber dongs with when I’m feeling sad and alone, I do my business with whatever I can find and go about my merry fucking way.”

“ _Alright_ , okay, fine,” he concedes sharply, tiptoeing back along the edge of desperation. “Fucking gross but fine, just get it and give it to me.”

You lean over and pluck the bottle from where it’s sitting on your nightstand next to your lamp, in plain sight. Even around a brimming warning headache that you should probably stop goofing around, you grin as you slap it into his now-waiting palm. He looks the furthest from amused.

But then he’s right down to business. You should have figured that Karkat would blend some of the endearingly misplaced diplomacy of his everyday attitude into all other facets of his life, including sex. Flustered and irritated, no doubt, but still hellbent on getting shit done, bless his perfect, hateful little heart. Hell, you almost praise him out loud just to give yourself something to do (the brimming headache is now being joined with the slightest of quaking in joints that you forget you have on a daily basis, that’s not a good sign) but before you get a chance, he’s got the bottle cap popped, the cream dispensed, and his very fucking suddenly cold, slick hand all over your junk and you forget instantly what you wanted to praise him for but who cares, that feels beyond amazing.

You push your hips against his hand just a little and you must make some sort of stupid noise because when your eyes re-focus on him he’s practically grinning triumphantly. Also kind of deviously. Which you are in no position to be combative about, right?

Right, so you’re not. Instead, you sink down onto your elbows and push your face into the hot crook of his shoulder and damn, _damn damn damn_ you are just floating in fucking heaven right now. The burn traveling from your groin to your stomach is filling and satisfying and you realize (not for the first time, either) that you _missed_ being this intimate with someone, even though past instances never got any further than this. You may prefer to come off as a douche most of the time, which has given you MUCH needed personal space since closeness can be really fucking awkward with the wrong people, but it’s also sort of isolated you and goddamnit, you’re _human_. You never really got used to people touching you, but that doesn’t mean that you’d never miss it once it was removed from the equation. 

The pleasure is overriding the head-fuckery pretty efficiently. It’s also keeping your mind off of any of your own reservations, lingering like a pack of hungry wolves just outside the weak, injured little deer that is your subconscious (too fast? Too soon? Does he know what he’s doing? Do _you_ know what _you’re_ doing? Shouldn’t there be more talking, petting, kissing, touching, _something_ before you take the plunge?), which is good because any more of those and you’ll be coming to another complete halt and you aren’t sure you’ll be able to recover as quickly if you get knocked on your ass again.

You feel him pull you closer to him, guiding you, and you move with him but you’re a little unsure, like… he’s definitely giving you two huge sparkling thumbs up to fuck his brains out and he ain’t stupid, if he didn’t want it he wouldn’t initiate it. But he’s a virgin, as he’s already indirectly confirmed because you are a dick and needed to find out for your own sick curiosity, so unless HE’S the one with the big dongs when he’s feeling sad and alone he’s in for a pretty rude surprise.

“You actually sure about that?” you hear your voice rumble, muffled against the side of his neck. “You know what that’s gonna feel like, right?”

“I do,” he all but purrs against your ear and you need to take a second to re-lock your elbows.

“Okay, ‘cause that’s, that’s gonna be pretty rough.”

“It’s fine,” he says, the razor-edge of his voice tinted with annoyance. You swallow hard when you feel yourself suddenly against something, oh you know exactly what part of his body that is, and you feel your stomach tighten up; did you just launch from 20 to 90 on a suburban backstreet, or are you just digging up some rarely-used caution for the sake of the situation?

“I mean, dude, you… haven’t even fully been like, prepared or some shit.”

“Dave.” He pulls back and looks up at you, his hands still around your junk (which you probably should have remembered before pissing him off); you expect to see a face that says ‘my tolerance for you is literally the lowest right now so shut up before I rip your dick off’ but instead, you’re getting an almost uncharacteristic seriousness from him that you’re really not fucking expecting.

“I’m not going to lay here and relay all of my past masturbatory habits to you,” he says, calmly but curtly, so goddamn _serious_ , that is wigging you the fuck _out_. “But trust me when I say it’s fine. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t tell you that. I’m not an idiot. Okay?”

Your first gut response is about to be ‘no wait though tell about your habits that’s pretty relevant to me right now’ but you decide against that one. The second gut response is ‘I never said you were an idiot’ but you put THAT one away, too, because why bother to snowball the situation to a potential argument. Any other circumstance, sure, prod at him until he’s storming out of the room because if he’s gonna be pissed at you, you may as well get a good look at his ass on the way out as a consolation prize. 

But this really isn’t the time. Even someone like _you_ can recognize that.

You shove the knee-jerk reaction of lapsing defensively into the typical douchey charade purposefully aside and breathe through your nose at him for a few seconds before nodding and dropping your forehead against his. 

“Okay,” you say, and that’s enough to be the scissors cutting the Grand Opening ribbon for him.

You’re instinctively taking his lead and pushing into him before you can even fully figure what the fuck is going on or before your brain can form anything to give to your mouth to say, but after half a second of that initial confusion you _cannot ever even a little_ give a fuck anymore because  he’s warm and it’s tight and he is applying force to pull you closer like he knows exactly what he’s doing, fuck, _shit_ , maybe he remembers sleeping with you before the fallout, maybe he remembers what you fucking can’t.

“God,” you blurt out without thinking and if he’s experiencing any discomfort with you pushing further in maybe a bit faster than his hands are prompting, he’s not showing it. You even distantly feel his hips lifting upward to meet you a little better and you gotta admit, he’s being enticingly and curiously pro about this for someone who’s never actually _done the do_ with another guy before. Maybe later on you’ll ask him about those ‘habits’ he mentioned, it’s bound to be a fantastic conversation given how easily he’s taking to the current situation.

Your timing, as always, can go F itself in the A because just as you’re starting to reflect along the outermost recesses of your mind that you surprisingly haven’t had any violent, unfortunate reactions to this yet, you are abruptly slammed with one like a fucking Hulk fist to the intestines.

It’s like the last time, but way more vivid – this fucking out-of-nowhere flashback, these memories that feel like they should belong to someone else but got lodged up in your brain somehow, totally unfamiliar but at the same time you can physically feel the moment like it’s happening right there. And it isn’t even anything sexy or whatever like the last one, either, just some bullshit planet you can’t remember that smells like copper and the air’s hot and dry like a Texas summer and you feel bruises _all fucking over you_ like they’ve been festering on your body for days and have only gotten worse. You can FEEL the hilt of some weapon leaving an impression in your hand and you recognize the weight of it and while all of this physical sensory stuff is good and nice (which it isn’t really, that was facetious), it doesn’t hold a fucking candle to what your brain is doing.

You don’t think you’ve ever felt so emotionally dead before in your entire present life.

That scares the absolute fuck out of you.

Fortunately, and you’re using that word _very_ loosely, this episode also matches the other one in the sense that you are fully reachable through it, which you will probably thank every single fucking deity you’ve ever read up on for later, considering you won’t even want to imagine what it would be like to be trapped in something like that with nothing to ease you out of it, like sleep paralysis but ten million times more horrifying. It takes a few minutes before you can process your real limbs shaking like they’re made of paper in a hurricane and a voice against your ear urging you to let it pass. “No, no, no,” it murmurs to you, perfectly calm, blessedly composed. “No, Dave, stay with me here, don’t let it take you with it.”

Who knows how much time passes before you’re able to pay attention to what’s going on again. Thankfully Karkat doesn’t give a fuck. When lucidity comes back to you, the coppery smell fades, the room is still warm but nowhere near as suffocating as it was, and the weapon in your hand is replaced with soft bedsheets, tangled furiously between your white-knuckling fingers. The all-encompassing, painful emptiness fades to exhaustion, confusion, and concern. None of these three much appeal to you in any normal circumstance but jesus h, they’re more than fucking welcome right now.

“There you go,” Karkat’s still saying to you; he hasn’t broken his cadence once, even with his hips still uncomfortably arched and you having gone soft inside of him who knows how fucking long ago. What a trooper, this guy. 

“Sorry,” you hiss out like a fucking dunce, like this was even a little bit your fault.

You’re kind of embarrassed again. Still better than feeling nothing, though, there’s that.

“No,” he says. “Just breathe for a minute.”

You do, and you don’t talk while you do it. The closest sensation you can compare this to is being woken up straight out of the middle of a REM cycle, when you’re still so half-asleep that you have no basic motor skills whatsoever. The breathing really helps, though. Every breath brings more and more reality back to you until you are With It enough to comprehend the fact that you are laying your entire body weight on a much smaller person. And, of course, that the sensation of being flaccid inside of someone is something left to be desired, to put it lightly.

You go to pull out because you think you can move now and really, you _are_ pretty embarrassed. If it feels this icky to you, you can’t imagine what it must feel like for him, but he stops you with his hands on your hips again. You’ve at least pulled back enough to NOT be a giant rhino crushing every bone and organ in his body so you look down at him, and he’s just looking back up at you so calmly, not like before when he was so concerned and frustrated that it only made you feel a little worse.

“Not nauseous?” he asks.

You shake your head a little.

“Headache is okay? Do you need water?”

“I’ll live,” you say, and he knows that you wouldn’t say that if you didn’t think you were. You’re shaken, you’re unhappy with what you just felt, but you’ll definitely live. 

His hands slide from your hips to your ass to kinda hold you where you are and he starts moving in little circles. Honestly you probably shouldn’t even _try_ to bone someone after going through something that unnerving, but how can you not consider the possibility when his hips are shifting like that and he’s biting his bottom lip just a little, maybe even subconsciously, and he’s got _whatever holy blessing_ that is going on on the inside, flexing and tightening around you in pulsing, practiced clenches, coercing you back into the mood.

Shame on you, you’re almost fully hard again in no time. Boner successfully re-attained, and he’s been breathing loudly and making small noises the entire time because he felt the whole thing happen, _shit_.

Neither of you are about to play the ‘Are We Sure This Is A Good Idea’ game again, not when perfection was lost and then snatched back so quickly. You’re gonna take this second chance and fucking _sprint_ with it and you know you have full consent to do so with the way he leans up to kiss you.

There are no words, jesus fucking christ. You’d always wondered if the whole trope about losing yourself during really good sex was legit; you wanted this big, cinematic, intense ‘first time’ (let’s not even get technical, here) at the forefront of your mind, obviously. Who doesn’t? But in the back you were always kind of realistically expecting it to be fumbling and awkward and generally uncomfortable like a great dane trying to mate with a chihuahua or something. Maybe you got lucky with this, maybe when it comes to this stuff your bodies remember more than your brains do, who knows. Who _cares_. You don’t have it in you to focus on anything other than trying really hard not to blow your load too early, right now.

He’s not making that very easy for you, either. Instincts are leading you to move faster and find that really good, steady pace but the faster you move, the better it feels and the more he reacts, the tighter his legs get around you, the more you want to abandon any restraints that you are desperately clutching onto for comfort’s sake and just _rail_ into him like a wild fucking animal until he’s waking the entire house up with your name. You don’t want it to end too fast, though; not with what you both went through to get to this point. You may as well drag it out as long as your body will let you (which might… not be too long, you aren’t gonna kid yourself), and it’s also immensely important to you that _he’s_ enjoying himself, too. There was a point once in your life (lives?) when you’d be totally fine and dandy with being sexually selfish, but not with him. Not only would it really fuck up this whole ‘new relationship’ vibe y’all have going on but he’d also probably kill you.

You keep trying to do that one thing you know about sex with another dude, digging in deeper at alternating angles, fumbling with hopeful inexperience for that sweet spot. You’ve done your homework and you know the drill, from what you know it’s kinda like finding the G only probably a little easier – you just don’t really know _where_ you’re supposed to be hitting, exactly. Like, you do but you don't, you know? Not while actually doing it. So you just keep moving, trying hard as you can to ignore the burning sensation spreading across your lower back while at the same time feeling a kind of like you’re trying to scoop the last small bits of ice cream out of the carton with a butter knife which is _significantly_ un-sexy. 

Lucky for you the proverbial ice cream is his favourite flavour and even while YOU might be feeling a little clumsy all of a sudden, he starts having the time of his fucking _life_ , his breaths getting sharper and his exhalations becoming much more vocal, this look of what you can only recognize as relief taking over his face. You’ve never had your own little buddy tickled like this before so you are admittedly pretty fascinated, but as much as you would like to transform this into some kind of super-hot study on how to drive Karkat completely out of his mind, you’re starting to lose your own. _Fast_.

You can’t help it – you’ve been watching him because you don’t want to hurt him or make him uncomfortable and it’s easier to differentiate discomfort through sight rather than sound, but it’s your expedited downfall now. Your quick trigger. You’ve gotten off to porn a fucking thousand times before in the past; you’re incredibly visually stimulated, and you’ve hit the fucking _pinnacle_ of visual stimulation by watching Karkat react to you fucking him real-time, less than a foot away from your own face.

The tendons in his neck start to stand out a little and he isn’t even struggling to keep his eyes open anymore, they’re screwed tightly shut and you watch his teeth lock together in a solid grit. His hands are actively pulling your thrusts in deeper by their death grip on your ass and you fight tooth and nail with every single exhausted muscle in your body not to slow down, not while he’s so obviously about to lose his footing on the tightrope and relying on you to make sure the plummet is a really motherfucking _good_ one.

Thankfully ( _oh god jesus christ you’re so thankful_ ) he shuts down before you do by mere seconds, surging up against you without any kind of warning, suddenly wrapping everything around you and dragging you flush to him. He’s muffling throaty, uneven growls into the crook of your neck and there’s an unmistakable gooey mess happening between your stomachs and you can’t even care, you just keep fucking pumping because you feel like a _pro_ , man, you are on top of the entire goddamn world and you STAY at the top of the entire goddamn world until you cannot physically keep your balance anymore and are forced to stage-dive right the fuck off of it after him.

You’re pretty sure you clinically black out for a few minutes.

Realistically it can't be for more than a minute or so but you jolt back into full consciousness when Karkat gives one of your shoulderblades a decently hard slap. You're doing the thing again, resting your weight entirely on him, and you gather enough of your waning energy to roll off of him before you break something. You crack your eyes open and look at him and he's staring half-lidded at the ceiling and visibly trying to control his breathing. His skin is all flushed and he's got you drying all over him but he looks fucking _beautiful_ , especially when he turns his head slightly to meet your line of sight.

Now would be when the old Karkat that you remember insults the hell out of you and gets up to leave or something, but you suppose being 'born again' in this new life has sort of man-handled him into some level of maturity. You can't promise that it's done the same for you but it's pretty obvious with him. Instead of letting it get weird, or lashing out self-defensively in some way, he just lets one corner of his mouth curl into a small smile, and his eyes slip shut.

You wanna say something suave, something that suits the mood just right, but sleep claims you just as swiftly before you get the chance. Some things are better left unsaid, anyway.

 

-   -   -

 

The next day is tough.

Waking up isn't as awkward as it could be. You're both entangled with one another and naked and warm and it's _fucking wonderful_. Somewhere along the night's time line he must have gotten chilly or something because he clearly sought out where you were lying next to him and attempted to completely bury himself into you. At least a good 90 percent of your bodies are in some kind of contact, and you can't deny that being pulled out of sleep by the sensation of his slow breathing against your chest is the best fucking thing you've ever felt in your life.

You peel apart once you're both completely awake and rock-paper-scissors (with a pointed lack of amusement, on his part, seeing as HE’S the one who fell asleep all nasty and it’s even nastier now) for first dibs on a shower. He wins, of course he fucking wins, and while he's down the hall doing his thing you stay on your bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking. It really blows that he has to leave only hours after you hit a pretty major landmark but you also kind of saw this coming. The hardest part is not being fucking sad about it, especially when he comes back to you with just his old boxers on because he forgot to bring backup clothes to the bathroom with him.

You give him an obnoxious once-over and he sheepishly frowns at you with a mumbled, "What?"

But you just get up, plant a big ol' smoocheroonie on his mouth, and move around him to head to a shower of your own.

He's already packed from his little runaway bitch-fit the night before, so he's basically got nothing to do while you're handling your biz. When you come back, he's back on your bed (is that ever a fucking welcome sight to see, you could so absolutely get used to that), propped on your pillows, tinkering around with his notepad again. You don't even know what the fucking thing is, his diary or something, but you pluck it out of his hands and slide onto the bed, getting between his legs and situating so that you're comfortable and avoiding contact between himself and any of your more vital sexual organs because that could turn into A Problem.

You just lay there for awhile, quiet, staring at different things across the room, idly petting one another while your brains work as separate entities, sorting through the past 24 hours. You get the hunch that you're more or less thinking about the same basic thing but neither of you voice it because, again, it's too goddamn sad. 

It isn't until he shifts to look at your digital alarm clock on the nightstand that you feel him resisting you, sitting up a little more and urging you up with him. Honestly, you want to stay exactly where you are, dead weight, and whine until he can't take it anymore and agrees to eat the cost of his plane ticket and stay longer just to get you to shut the fuck up. Unfortunately, you know he has some unfinished business to attend to, important shit, and you're sort of on the upswing, here - far be it from you to bat it back down for your own selfish reasons.

"You gonna come back?" you address the tiny elephant in the room as you wind up sitting side by side, both looking at your respective feet over the side of the bed.

"Of course I am," he says faintly.

"Probably like… not for awhile though, right?"

He hesitates, idly chews on the inside of his upper lip, then shrugs.

"I can't really give you a time frame."

You make some kind of 'mm' noise. You kick your feet a little, beginning to feel uncomfortable and disappointed with his stoniness. You almost start to think that you should probably be used to it by now, but when you get right down to the nitty-gritty you've technically only known of his existence, what, a week? Yeah, a week. You aren't exactly 'used' to anything with him anymore, quite yet.

"But." 

You look up at him, quickly, because you were hoping there was an extension to the last almost cryptic statement. Try not to give yourself whiplash there, Desperado, jesus fuck.

He glances at you, meets your eyes.

"But I _can_ promise that I'm coming back."

"That's good enough for me," you respond quietly. Truth. You didn't know what to expect but you're relieved that it came out along those lines. "Do what you gotta do, as long as this wasn't the last time I got to actually. You know. Hang out with you or whatever."

He smirks at you, wryly, maybe not even really convincingly but at least he's trying.

"I'm not ditching you, Dave," he says.

You shrug. You're so fucking awkward.

"I know," you say. "Shut up." Because everything else billowing through your head right now is either useless to the conversation or vulnerable to teasing and you _really_ can't do teasing right now.

He calls his cab five minutes later. He's been putting it off until the last minute. After he hangs up, you both rise to your feet and you're thinking this is when you do the uncomfortable shuffle-dance of 'Okay I'll call you when I get home, okay yeah do that, okay' but he surprises you by moving closer and trapping you in a REALLY fucking tight hug.

"Hey," you murmur instinctively, because you can feel a lot in a hug with that kind of strength. Kid is a pretty tough cookie but he's got all of those big sticky human Feelings to deal with, now. You imagine the constant adaptation must be kind of hard.

So, you hug him back, nice and hard. Because you're there for him and that's the most glaringly appropriate way to show him, at the moment.

 

-   -   -

 

Downstairs, the house is still empty and quiet. It's fucking early so you're not surprised; really, you'd like nothing more than to bribe Bro into being his ride to the airport just so you could go with and have a little extra time together, feeling giddy while holding hands in the backseat or some shit, but you know better than to try and wake the fucking kraken before 9:00 am.

As you stand next to the front door, facing one another, you ask him if you should wake the others up so they can at least say goodbye, and you’re not _that_ terribly surprised when he shakes his head.

“I don’t do the ‘people getting emotional over me’ thing,” he says.

“They’re gonna be pissed that you left without saying anything to them,” you say, grinning a little because yeah, they will be pissed, but you’re probably gonna find it funny. “Especially Jade.”

He shrugs one shoulder. “She’s got my number, she can bitch me out directly if she wants to. Just tell her I’ll be back soon. Tell all of them that.”

“Yeah, I guess that’ll be enough to placate them.” You shuffle a little, hands in the pockets of your sweatpants. "Can I ask you something?" 

He lifts his eyebrows a little, expectantly. 

"You gonna go see whatshisname? At the looney bin?"

He looks away from you at the floor, but only for a second.

"Maybe," he answers. "I still don’t even know where he is but I was thinking about it. Just for closure, I guess. That's the only thing I'd gain from it, anyway."

His tone is a little careful and that kind of sucks, like he’s expecting you to start some shit for even considering the idea.

You take a couple steps closer, eliminating the sour, vacant air between you, putting your hands on his hips. "If you're gonna," you say. "Just keep your guard up, okay? Not just because he's a whack job but because I don't want you to… y'know."

He continues to stare at you. He wants you to finish that thought.

"…I don't want you to get hurt," you finish after a considerably lengthy pause. "I get that your history is complex and everything and you went through way too much shit, I actually remember a good chunk of that mess. But you still have a _lot_ of your base personality and if he does, too, it could be some bad news bears, know what I mean?"

"I can handle myself," he responds, and he sounds a little snippy like you're questioning his judgment so you diffuse the situation by getting as close to him as you can and putting your forehead against his.

"I know," you say. "Long as you're coming back here eventually I don't give a rat's ass who you see. Given that it's all purely platonic, obviously."

He snorts. "Obviously," he agrees. He's quiet for a few seconds before confirming, "Don't get intimidated. When I come back, it'll be for good."

Something fucking moves around in your stomach and while his 'intimidated' jab was just that - a jab - you can't bring yourself to answer sarcastically because that last line there was fucking golden. 

You are in this so goddamn deep, you barely recognize yourself.

A car honks a few times outside, loud and blaring, and you grudgingly pull away from each other.

"Call me when you land or something?" you ask.

He nods a little. "Fine."

There’s a very short pocket of time where the two of you just look at each other without saying anything. He breaks it and makes the first move, shoving himself back into your arms and devouring your mouth with just as much fervor as he had the night before. You practically cling to him, second-guessing just how easily you almost let him walk away, and you start irrationally wondering if maybe you can just drag him back upstairs and show him some _really_ good reasons to miss his flight, but the cab driver fucking leans on his goddamn horn again and that's all she wrote.

He looks upset as he pulls back, so you grin at him even as you're restraining yourself with everything you have.

"Don't be a wiener, get out of here," you tell him, and somehow that's enough to steel his resolve.

"I'll see you soon," he says. "You'll know the second I'm ready to get the fuck out of the midwest for good."

"Jesus christ, I'll be waiting with like eight bottles of champagne to celebrate."

He finally fucking smiles.

You open the door for him, and he doesn't look back at you until he's in the cab. You lean against the doorframe and try to look a lot cooler than you feel, giving him a small two-fingered salute as the driver starts to pull away. He waves back, just a little, in response. 

You watch the cab as it travels down the long driveway and disappears into the surrounding woods. You don’t head back inside until you can’t see any trace of it anymore.

You make your way back up to your room and it feels surprisingly empty, even though he only spent one night in it with you. You can’t shake the feeling of loss and it bugs you because you really didn’t _lose_ anything. He left everything off on a nice, tidy, concluded note and there’s literally no reason to feel like everything was just ripped away from you. You chalk it up to just being a big baby. He’s gone and you already miss him and you don’t really have a whole lot to bide your time with until he comes back. It’s totally rational, but it still fucking sucks.

Your bedsheets are a crumpled mess and you know the second you push your face into your pillow like you _really really_ want to that it's going to smell a little like him and shit's gonna start getting even more difficult.

But something's on your pillow already. 

Karkat's notepad.

You hiss a soft, "Aw, shit," to yourself as you cross the room to grab it. He's been attached to the damn thing like a security blanket off and on through his entire visit so you know that's the first thing he's gonna notice that he left behind. And probably be pretty bummed out by it.

You consider mailing it to him, and you also consider keeping it held hostage and sending him really fucking retarded fake ransom notes for it via text to make him laugh. In the moment, though, concern gives way very, very quickly to curiosity and before your morality catches up to you, you're being a nosy asshole and opening the cover to peek at the first page.

You’re met with his scrawled handwriting.

 

_Strider,_

_I knew you'd look, you shithole._

_But it's okay that you did, because this notebook is actually yours. Surprise. No reason to feel like a total fucking dickweed. Not about this, at least. I can’t speak for anything else._

_Go through it slowly. There's a lot of stuff in here that you might have still retained but I can guarantee you that there's stuff that you haven't, and it might fuck you up if you’re not careful. The last half of the book might be a little hard for you, so don't skip any pages, just take it one at a time. I don't want to get a call from Jade telling me that you gave yourself a fucking aneurism trying to speed through memories like you're some kind of stupid superhero. You're the real human, here. Let things soak in naturally, all right?_

_I'm sorry if some of it isn't perfect. I took a lot of art courses and clocked in a lot of hours of practice to preserve things, and I want to pass all of it to you. If you have any complaints, you can kindly directly them to the nearest garbage disposal and go fuck yourself._

_The second anything starts to feel too overwhelming, text me or call me. Hopefully it won't, though, because you're going to fucking listen to me and go slowly, aren't you?_

_I'll be in touch._

_Love you._

_Karkat_

 

You turn the page.

It's a series of smallish sketches, all done with a pencil, of you, John, Jade, and Rose. Much younger. There's no real rhyme or reason to them, no central plot point of the pictures, they're almost like character studies, different angles and expressions, extremely candid and beautifully detailed, uncannily well done.

You turn to the next page and breathe out loudly. One side of the page is the Sburb symbol, intricately stylized like the side paneling of an actual house, and the other side has entirely filled-in, dark sketches of the Pesterchum and Trollian symbols. Next to each symbol is a list of every chat name you’ve ever come across during your stint with the game, and who they belonged to.

These aren't just fucking sketches, it dawns on you. They're _memories_. He's been sketching out shit to remember, slowly and easily, this entire fucking time, starting with the most basic shit that you can already recall.

You close the notepad and stare down at it like Karkat just left you the first ever original version of the fucking bible and it was just filled front to back with hyper-realistic pictures of dicks. It’s pretty surreal to think that you’re holding the sledgehammer that’s going to inevitably destroy the dam blocking all of your memories and who knows, maybe it won’t even work. Maybe you’ll just spend the next couple of days oogling at Karkat’s pretty drawings (he’s _really_ good, you’re actually surprised), recognizing everything up until you don’t anymore and then it’s like reading a comic or something. Then again, who’s to say seeing it won’t trigger something in your brain and unlock things that have been mechanically suppressed since the morning you woke up in Houston all over again? If physically being with Karkat was enough to get you glimpses, maybe taking stuff in visually will slide the puzzle pieces together a little bit easier.

You’d be lying if you said the prospect didn’t give you the willies to some extent. It’s a decently thick notepad so you know he’s not gonna cheat you out of any important details. This is bound to be a fucking rollercoaster and even while you doubt that Karkat would slam you with anything _too_ world-shaking, he’s probably warning you to take it easy for a reason. But… getting to see the progression of your past relationship would be pretty damn worth any hardship that comes hand-in-hand with remembering, wouldn’t it?

You smile to yourself and tap the notepad against your thigh for a second. The house is still silent outside of your bedroom door. You have a little time to yourself and if you don’t distract your brain, it’ll just stubbornly float back to being weird and sad, anyway. You’re thinking it might get kind of hard to limit yourself and spread this out over a span of days, like getting invested in a really good book, but if Karkat’s seriously asking you to for the sake of your own health, you’ll find a way to make it happen.

Shoving your comforter to one side of the bed, you lay down and get nice and comfy against your pillows. You reach across to the nightstand for your shades and slide them on, blinking a little as your eyes adjust to the clearer, sharper vision.

You ease the notepad open again. You don’t skip either of the first two pages of drawings that you already looked at. Best to go in a direct sequence for starters and leave no detail untouched, right?

Right.

Your name is Dave Strider.

You’re ready to remember fucking everything.


End file.
